The Thoughts of Angels
by pinkolifant
Summary: Rated for mentions of past abuse. Veil of Death is a time traveling device. AU after the OoTP. Many characters and according to readers not a bad plot.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own Harry Potter and I make no profit out of writing this.

**Chapter 1 A Stone House Above the Sea**

A simple stone house overlooked the sea, pale against the sky of winter cold.

Sirius Black was trapped inside the house. It was not supposed to be winter, he thought, it was the glorious month of June, just before summer school holidays, when he arrived. He drifted in semi-conscious state, glossy eyes barely mirrored in the small window glass high up on the wall, covered by ghostly dirt of many years.

He remembered his last thought before falling into the Veil: This is as it should be. He could almost feel the caress of green light on his skin, still laughing, eyes slowly widening in shock.

When he opened his eyes again, he briefly considered his troubled and rather short life and found rapidly that he preferred it by far to a long life filled with all the happiness of this world where he would have never met his friends or given his life for his godson.

Only he didn't expect death to be just so… uneventful. Between cold stone walls, he stood on his toes to peer through a miniature rounded window covered with grime wishing to get a glimpse of the outside. He was trying to see something, anything at all. There wasn't anything. There wasn't anyone. He was utterly and completely alone.

Imprisoned.

Again.

He examined the room he was in over and over again. The walls were died plain white, with masonry visible beyond paint on some places. The room was very small and empty except for an old Muggle painting depicting the birth of a baby at night with a heavy dark blue sky above the little boy and his parents. There was a bright star depicted high above the characters and a pair of winged beings playing musical instruments. The ominous dark blue of the sky dominated the painting occupying almost three quarters of the available surface, threatening to grow over all other figures and completely conquer the scenery.

Yet the family seemed at peace, unhinged by the rage of the elements around them. A small source of ephemeral light was illuminating the body of the child and the face of his mother, while father stood in the shadows turning his ear to listen to the music from above .

Sirius studied the painting obsessively as there was nothing else to look at but it remained a beautiful, yet lifeless object to his eyes. He concluded there wasn't much fairness in death just as there wasn't any in life. The star vaguely reminded him of his namesake Sirius and of just how much he hated his name, another heirloom of the insane family where all known members have been named upon the stars.

He must have been there for a really long time. Already for a while, he noticed he was hungry. This should not matter in death, he mused, yet the hunger grew with every passing hour. Or was it days?

The magic of the room was wrong. Whenever he tried to use his wand to reveal something about his surroundings there were no results. Only strange jolts of light would come out of it whenever he approached the painting in his attempts. So he dropped the wand on the stone floor in front of the painting. What was once almost a part of his body, was now a useless tool.

At a certain point the thirst became unbearable. His lips were getting thin and dry like old parchment half eaten by Pixies. His sight blurred and he thought that through one of the walls of his small cell he could glimpse a human figure. The figure was ghostlike and it moved graciously at the edge of his vision. He stumbled to the wall, touched it, hit it with his fists and cried out in helpless rage.

Then he laughed like one possessed by all the demons of this world.

It took him some time to calm down and start pacing stubbornly around the room examining it all over again: the walls, the painting, the window.

The walls, the painting, the window.

He repeated the routine countless times until in the end he could not walk. So he crawled.

The walls, the painting, the window.

When he could not move at all, he lay beaten on the ground. The ghost of his imagination was near him yet somewhere far away. He longed for blissful oblivion as his experience of death so far definitely didn't meet his expectations.

Imagine being cursed to death by your own cousin only to die once again from thirst. Bellatrix, my dear, he mused, what are you up to now? Killing some more family members you don't approve of only to please your master? But you didn't get to Harry, did you? I took care of that.

He smiled and found himself hoping fervently that Voldemort would kill Bellatrix for her failure to bring him Harry. That would be fair just like Sirius's demise had been more than fitting for the last son of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. He was almost happy again looking at his situation from that perspective and decided to ignore his thirst. Yes, the accursed family name had died out with him as it should have happened long ago in order to pay for all the evil they had done or sponsored in the past. He found it appropriate that he should suffer in death for what has been done under the name he bore even if he renounced his family when he was only 16 years old.

Knowing that he died rather than betrayed his friends brought him a good measure of self-fulfilment. Sirius always wanted to go down fighting since the war started and he couldn't help but hope that James would have been proud.

Still he always expected he would see James and Lily Potter when he died. He would tell them how their son Harry, they Boy Who Lived, vanquished their murderer once and was about to do it again. He would ask them for forgiveness because he unwillingly caused their death.

Sirius almost felt sorry for Bellatrix who was surely going to lose her mentor murderer in the future. He had to give her one thing: dear Bellatrix was the best in her category of wizards and witches. She befriended only the evillest of all. And Voldemort qualified for that honourable title.

Had things gone differently in Sirius's life, would he personally embrace the darkness and the twisted greatness it seemed to offer? A deeply hidden part of him screamed for revenge power could bring for the 12 years of his life lost in Azkaban, the wizarding prison whose Dementor guardians sucked out all happiness he possessed and very nearly consumed his soul. He was sentenced without trial, escaped, and had been on the run until he was finally hiding in his parents' house, back to his childhood cage, more horrible to his soul than any Dementor could ever be.

"Please, give me some water", he thought or perhaps he spoke, he could not be sure.

"I'm dying," he whispered. "Why can't I see Lily and James if we are all dead?"

Sirius closed his eyes and drifted slowly in the past. He was 11 again and saw for the first time the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The castle rose in his mind making his chest swell with emotion. Sirius smiled and passed out, only an inch away from well and truly dying.

He dreamt an odd song sung by childlike voices telling him about all of his regrets. The warm and loving family he never had and which he always imagined as a child and later as a notorious prisoner. The role of observer forced upon him in the second war against Voldemort and the maddening confinement in his parents' house. The war he wanted to lead in only to be among the first ones to fall. He stumbled under the burden of his biggest regret of his own role in James and Lily's death, recommending them as a keeper of their secret location Peter Petrigrew, the man who had then truly betrayed them to Voldemort.

Until one winter morning, when he could barely stir from exhaustion, a breeze came, a fragrance of freshness and growing things. He could not be sure that it was morning, yet the sensation was delicious and almost palpable, the first taste of coming spring. He would have performed a Memory Charm on himself to forget that feeling if he could still locate his wand but he was too week to search for it.

Sirius desired to return to numbness for he could not bear to suffer yet another disappointment should this change mean nothing at all. He was sure that if he hadn't been insane before, as most of his family members were said to be, approximately a week after falling through the Veil, he was completely and utterly mad.

Against his better judgement, he started to hope. For what, he could not tell. And the scent was lingering.

Ariana Dumbledore celebrated the 12th anniversary of living alone in a small stone house in the middle of nowhere surrounded only by the collection of her family old furniture and obsolete magical objects. Her late father had a passion for collecting beautiful useless items so she shared the already small space with paintings, mirrors, carpets, textiles, candle holders and jewels, some of them cursed long time ago but nowadays as innocent as a new born child. There was also a significant number of wizarding books, none of them state of the art but all of them teaching a little bit about all kinds of magic.

Albus's old friend Gellert used a Portkey to transport her to her new home 12 years ago on Albus's bidding. Every now and then Gellert would bring her fresh food supplies and some more insignificant books to fill her time with. His visits disturbed her deeply. He would tell her how Albus kept promising (in vain, she always thought bitterly, all Albus's promises have been in vain) that he would find her a better place to stay one day, while Aberforth only scowled and glared at the injustice of her situation but could not sway Albus, who was her legal guardian, to help her.

She could not blame her brothers. It was not their fault that their sister was a lunatic and a freak who had to be kept away not to hurt somebody with uncontrolled magic. Sometimes she wished she was a real Squib. Or a Muggle. She would not wish upon anyone the horrible reality of not being able to summon her magic at will, nor to do anything with it. Except that her magic could come uncalled for and hurt people she loved.

She begged Albus to kill her after she had caused an explosion that accidentally killed their mother.

Ariana had been confined ever since, for a year in their family house in Godric's Hollow and then in the small stone house in the middle of somewhere. Ariana didn't know where she was and after 12 years she didn't care to find out.

Her brothers explained to her in the beginning that it was for her own good but she found that knowing and accepting what was for one's own good were two very different things.

Refusing to think about her life she decided to be happy on one more anniversary of her solitary imprisonment. At least here she could not hurt anybody. Sometimes she thought much more time had passed, almost a lifetime, but the dates from the newspapers Gellert would bring denied this assumption and she was silently afraid of going utterly mad. Her body has changed and she felt older, not old, not that old, but not a girl any more.

She looked at herself and straightened her heavy woollen winter robes in light grey colour with a pattern of scattered lemon yellow stars, a gift from her brother Aberforth for her 14th birthday when she was still free. Luckily she didn't grow much in height since then, only her hair had grown considerably and the braid she wore was so heavy that it caused her headaches.

Ariana released her hair from the tight grip of a black ebony hair pin. Reckless golden blond curls that gleamed orange in the sunlight fell over her shoulders and all over her back.

She improvised a cake from all kinds of food she had, from home-made biscuits and pieces of old bread smearing it over with the last remnants of raspberry jam she saved for that occasion. She wished she could conjure 12 candles, aware that she could blow herself up in the attempt to do it. So she closed her eyes and imagined them burning. She imagined herself in a pale orange dress in the garden of the family house where she lived as a child. Her parents and her brothers were there, beaming at her. In her mind she had a beautiful wand which she used to gracefully light the candles. Blowing the imaginary candles out, she wished in the back of the mind, subconsciously, that someone would come and take her away from her cell somewhere else, any place else, near or far, with the only condition that she had never seen it before.

She kept her eyes closed for a very long time. A breeze passed over her head carrying the scent of fresh herbs and the sea. There was no noise but she could still hear the movement of the waves gently washing the shore in the early morning. Her magic was running through her as a wild animal about to tear apart from the leash it had overgrown in time.

When she opened her eyes, her surroundings have changed. The room has become smaller, divided in two by a transparent wall. She approached the barrier and touched it. It felt smooth under her fingers yet firmer than brick and stone. She could not cross.

Wonderful, she thought attributing the change to her uncontrolled magic. I will crush myself with walls next time and be done with this.

And then, beyond the barrier, under the Muggle painting that Gellert found with a woman who was dying and offered it to her father some 20 years ago, she saw a man. An unnaturally white faced man with bewildered grey eyes and black curly hair falling to his shoulders. He was wearing a dark coloured velvet coat as if he had just joined her after some social occasion for gentlemen but the rest of his attire was much less formal. She had never seen a wizard dressed like that. She had never seen clothes like he wore.

She was terrified and hid herself in a corner before he could see her, regretting that she had undone her hair. Memories of insistent hands tugging on her hair flooded her mind, drawing her closer to the point of suffocation, three pairs of young hands, then only one, one pair of thin bony arms.

After a while, curiosity was stronger than her fears and she realised what she had wished for. She understood that she wanted to lash out and kill herself with her magic somewhere in the open if that was indeed her destiny. Being buried alive was no longer acceptable, she could not stand it any more. Ariana tapped the barrier and waved to the man but there was no reaction.

It took her the rest of that day to realize that the man couldn't see her. She fell asleep on the floor leaning on the barrier between them, her mind puzzled and her body restless. She woke up stiff and no more intelligent as to what she should do.

For three long days she observed him. He's odd, she thought. How can anybody support being enclosed with such dignity? Apart from the maddening laugh that sometimes took him, he never once tried banging his head to the wall or taking his own life, as it occurred to her to do every now and then during her prolonged stay in the house. He must have been getting hungry as well.

Another day passed and she realized she would have to do something to get him out, or he would die.

Let him die, said the voice of reason. He is a man. He will hurt you. Boys have never been kind to you. Boys have spoiled you and ruined your use of magic. Everybody despises you now. You are a burden to your family. Your brothers don't want to see you any more.

The image of Gellert caressing her cheek came into mind and so did his other actions last time he brought her food, resembling so closely the actions of those Muggle boys when she was a child. Except that he went further. She had been ruined already so even if she told what Gellert did, no one would ever believe her. And since no one except Gellert ever came to visit her, there was no one to talk to anyway.

And nothing could be proven! Icy fingers on her cheek, freezing feeling on her body. Apparently if you did it the way Gellert wanted you could not even become with child, or so he told her. It didn't really hurt her but she felt tainted and a bit more dishonoured every time. She wished her mother lived longer and told her more about the ways of men towards women.

Gellert beamed about what he did to her, about what they did _together_ according to him and announced his intention to marry her even if she was a freak during his last visit. He would ask Albus for her hand before summer. She supposed that she should be grateful that someone wanted to marry a ruined girl while all she really wanted to do was to blast Gellert into the skies.

But her magic was not hers to command. Not when she wanted it anyway.

Ariana looked at the man sprawled on the floor in front of the painting, helpless, begging for water and babbling about wanting to see someone called Lily and James. It was the first time she heard him talk. She decided she liked the sound of his voice better than Gellert's and that he was probably too weak to hurt her.

She thought of Gellert's sinewy fingers clutching her forearms and felt the energy rolling out of her in direction of the barrier separating her from the intruder. The transparent wall still stood. Maybe she should be just a little bit angrier. She focused on what the Muggle boys did to her. Nothing happened.

She recalled the most dangerous memories she had, her father dying in prison for hurting the Muggles who hurt her. She purposefully recalled the explosion that killed her mother with the greatest detail she could muster. None of it worked. Her magic would not move, heavy as a coffin made of led in which her father's remains were returned to the family from Azkaban.

The man in front of her was so pathetic and worn out. "I don't want him to die", she admitted out loud and the feeling of a new certainty erupted in a wave of magic surrounding her like a spongy orange glowing bubble in a way it had never happened before. The wall separating them lost gravity as an unconscious body before it started floating and finally diluted into the thin air, not blasted but somehow transformed into a gaseous substance. Ariana stumbled and nearly fell on the stranger, toppling over an inert piece of wood loose next to his limp hands.

His wand, she thought, sticking it carefully in one of the deep long pockets of her inner robes she never took off, not even for sleeping.

He was in a bad condition. Ariana had never had to care for anybody before. It was always she who needed help and protection of others. How was she going to take care of someone? Still, she couldn't deny feeling confident, refreshed and… _powerful_.

I can do this, she thought.

After all she tore down the wall without killing either of them and that was a good start.

She went for some water, sat next to him and started carefully pouring it into his dry mouth. One more drop. And then another. The man was drinking and breathing but showed no other reaction, his eyes closed all the time. He was different than her brothers or Gellert, careless and calm as a breeze. When he stopped drinking, she felt compelled to further probe this difference. She remembered her mother comforting her after her father's funeral. Imitating her mother's gestures she cradled the man's head. Long dark hair spread in her lap mixing itself with the grey layers of her robes like feathers of a wild bird scattered on an empty beach in winter.

It was soothing.

She remained seated for a long time staring at the dirty window, imagining the distance behind it, closing her eyes to remember the colour of the sky.

When she opened her eyes to look down, a pair of shining grey eyes gazed at her in adoration as if she was a fairy from long forgotten tales she adored as a child.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't own Harry Potter.

**Chapter 2 A New Place in London**

The night that Sirius Black died a most peculiar structure appeared in Muggle London, between two shabby office blocks in a small street hosting underground the Ministry of Magic. The Muggles saw it as a new construction project with a big title in bright orange letters: "Lyra's. Grand opening in June."

No one found it strange that the large structure did not even exist a week ago and that somehow it crept between the existing buildings that were usually there. Older people could swear it had been there before or that it has never gone missing in the first place. The house number was shaped as a pattern of stars resembling number 13, which was somehow fitting as the house inserted itself between numbers 12 and 14 even if that side of the street was supposed to have only even numbers.

An old drunk sleeping on the bench between two trees across the new building tried to tell the police that there was something wrong. The police gently tapped him on the back. One of the agents felt particularly merciful that night so he paid the dinner to the old man as well as a night in a cheap hotel. This agent believed he could participate in charity at least once a year and indulge in beating his wife on all the other days. The drunk hugged him enthusiastically and thanked him so many times.

Be as it may, the wife abusing police agent decided to venture into the grounds of a construction site and saw a strange cuddled figure sleeping on a floor. It was a rather tall unattractive woman, with dark chestnut colour curly hair tied firmly on top of her head. She could have been in her late thirties or early forties. Before he knew what happened a female voice started talking in his mind: "You want to leave all your possessions to your wife and go and spend the rest of your life in Brasil". Splendid idea, thought the policeman, and retired slowly back to the street intending to find his family lawyer as soon as possible and make the necessary arrangements.

To witches and wizards the structure looked like an apothecary shop similar to establishments that could be found on Diagon Alley, the main shopping street of the wizarding London. However, it had a large hall on the back side, which looked from the outside like a library or perhaps like a seclusion wing for incurable patients in St Mungos hospital.

The truth was that no one, Muggle or wizard, could see it as it really was. The back structure was lifted from the ground and it somehow floated in the air, supported only by two thin irregular buttresses with claws, similar to the legs of a giant bird or perhaps a pre-historic snake before the natural evolution left those animals legless. A sharper look could perhaps reveal it to be a large wooden family house neither standing fully on earth nor hovering in the skies. The house looked like it had flown to London overnight with the intention to stay there for a while, balancing in the void.

But the most disturbing thing was that many wizards suddenly remembered doing their shopping there on a daily basis and went on enthusiastically talking about the establishment to their friends and acquaintances. Oblivious to the extraordinary nature of the house, they saw it as a nice shop with large storage room in the back. Now, normally it was the Muggles, the blessedly non magical people, who could see and perceive many things that in reality were not as they seemed. But it had to be duly noted that witches and wizards rarely made similar mistakes on such a large scale.

/

Severus Snape spent the night in the Ministry of Magic staring at the Veil of Death.

He arrived well after the battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the supporters of the Dark Lord as a double spy both for the Order and Lord Voldemort. He convinced both his Masters that there was a need to investigate the aftermath of the skirmish. He surprised even himself by cold blooded lying to both of them, lost in wondering whose side he was on - sometimes he wasn't sure from so much pretence.

Be as it may, Severus had always been on his own side and he had to admit at least to himself that the real reason why he hurried up to the Ministry of Magic that night was that his biggest enemy, Sirius Black, had died. The Gryffindor jumped thoughtlessly at first real occasion to protect his godson Harry Potter the-boy-who-might-one-day-vanquish-the-Dark-Lord and didn't come back.

Severus remembered treating Black with disdain, laughing at his uselessness for the Order while Sirius sat confined against his will in the Headquarters, forced not to fight, no matter how much he may have wanted to, by the Head of the Order of the Phoenix no less, the seemingly invincible Headmaster of the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry Albus Dumbledore.

Snape was glad on many occasions not to possess the exuberant outgoing character of the now late Gryffindor. Sirius, the rebel, Sirius, the innocent, imprisoned for 12 years for no reason at all in Azkaban, at the mercy of its guards – the Dementors – magical beings able to suck out a soul and force inmates to relive the worst moments of their lives. And what for? Only to end up as an outcast, the hunted, locked up again and in his childhood prison – his parents' old house he donated to the Order for Headquarters.

It looked as if Sirius had finally broken free. It made sense. And Severus should have been pleased. His childhood enemy, the boy and the young man who bullied him, was dead. Bellatrix Lestrange, born Black, cast a Killing Curse on her own cousin and his lifeless body dived into the Veil and disappeared according to the eye witnesses. Bella was certainly going to be proud, thought Severus briefly remembering a different Bella, an older colleague in Hogwarts oddly protective of younger colleagues in the Slytherin house, full of life and so very similar to her Gryffindor cousin in nature before she plunged into darkness and became one of the most powerful Death Eaters and close confident of the Dark Lord himself.

Snape was genuinely, profoundly astonished by how terribly, dreadfully guilty he felt about the death of Sirius Black. He tried to rationalize this feeling by telling himself that Harry Potter saw a father in Sirius, and Snape wanted to protect the Potter boy only because he never stopped loving his mother Lily over the years, despite that she had died and had never loved him. Even before he formulated the argument fully in his consciousness he knew it was rubbish.

If anyone could look into Snape's mind, and no one could, not even the Dark Lord, given his extreme ability at Occlumency and general and constant hiding of what was in his soul, they would know that Severus regretted that Sirius Black died because Black, like so many others lost in war, did not deserve death.

And while the blame lay on Voldemort and Bella and their Death Eating kind, Snape's taunting may have just given a tiny little nudge to Sirius forcing him to rush into his premature death.

Snape would surely never admit it, maybe he was even unable to grasp it, but in the very bottom of his aged injured soul dwelt a certainty that the light was the only way out of the darkness. Sirius, like many others, like Lily before him, had died for the light. And Snape knew he was going to do the same when his time would come.

In the meantime he surprised himself further wishing that the idiot of Black had lived.

The Veil of Death loomed high above the stony dais while Severus suppressed all his feelings with an enormous well-practised conscious effort, focusing on the facts, an endeavour he excelled in. The tattered curtain was black. It hung motionless and gave no sign of life. Occasionally he believed that it was dark blue in colour instead of black as if it reflected a cloudy sky many floors above in the streets outside the Ministry. His sharp mind started running through the premises of how a powerful magical object as the Veil clearly was could work. The most logical assumption would be that it was a transportation device of some kind as no body was found. But for what kind of travel, from place to place, through time, to another dimension, to another universe, to afterlife if it existed, or simply to the void, Severus could not tell. Not yet in any case. For a moment he was tempted to walk into it himself but that would be of no use to anybody before he could learn more.

Next to the edge of a pointed arch holding the Veil he noticed a few long dark hairs, which could have belonged to either Sirius or Bellatrix except that the smell reminded him of some tropical wood he would use in a rare potion against the after effects of unforgivable curses he sometimes brewed for days. Not having any other clues he tucked them in his robes and remained seated like a statue, lost in his thoughts until dawn.

In the morning Severus cornered one of the Unspeakables, the employees in the Department of Misteries where the Veil was stored, and forced her to hand him over a pile of parchments describing the Veil's characteristics and known history. The woman, a distant relative of Amelia Bones, was very nervous. Severus noticed it and turned awfully nasty towards her until the woman started shaking and mentioned, first looking behind her back to be sure that no one was listening, that an ugly short old man was seen around the Veil right after the battle, but as soon as the Aurors present on the scene tried to approach him the man vanished into the thin air.

Carrying more questions than answers Severus stormed out of the Ministry followed by a swish of his long black robes. Before Apparating, he noticed an old wooden shop sign saying "Peverell and son" in the street just above.

He remembered buying Venomous Tentacula leaves in that shop with his mother when he was just a little boy. There was something disturbing about this otherwise innocuous memory but he couldn't pinpoint the cause.

Wishing for a distraction from his murderous night thoughts about his role in the demise of Sirius Black, he gently pushed the door and entered. The shop was empty. He turned around to leave when a woman dressed in smooth black robes emerged from behind the counter under which she had been presumably crouching and arranging goods or perhaps even sleeping. Her robes were even simpler than his own, a rare occurrence in a woman and a witch, yet elegant and possibly self-made. Dark chestnut coloured hair was pinned tight on the top of her head so that the length of the hair could not be seen, giving her a hard look and her eyes were pale blue until they suddenly flashed with the tiniest flicker of... Was it bright green?

Impossible! Only _Potter_ and Lily had those eyes! It had to be the effect of the light. Taking a better look he made sure that her eyes were clearly a mixture of grey and blue. One or two strands of curly hair escaped the bun and played on her face giving her a younger look for a moment. He could not tell her age and she certainly wasn't beautiful but she seemed vaguely familiar. Before he could ask her anything, a short old man whooshed into the shop and addressed him. The man was chubby and half bold yet he moved too fast for his age and his demeanour was between self-assured and threatening. Severus was many things but he was not a fool and the old man made him weary as very few people could.

"Good morning, Sir, how can I help you?" asked the newcomer cheerfully.

"Would you happen to have some leaves of asphodel and wormwood?" Severus asked in his most threatening tone failing to greet the seller, focusing again on the woman in his peripheral vision.

"Wormwood is in standard packaging of 100 grams. We have asphodel in jars with 10 or with 20 leaves, what would you prefer?

"20 leaves will be fine."

The man moved or almost rolled to the back of the shop to retrieve the ordered goods. Severus looked around, impatient as hell, and the feeling of uneasiness grew on him. Being a spy, his survival sometimes depended on checking on his uncanny feelings. So he couldn't resist casually asking the lady some questions, trying to be civil and painfully failing in his efforts as usual.

"Have we met?" Severus sounded as if he has just read out loud somebody's death sentence.

"I doubt it, why do you ask?" were the first words the lady in question pronounced trying hard to sound bored, but Snape could tell that she had been deeply disturbed by his question so he continued without mercy:

"I seem to recall visiting your shop before but I doubt that I have ever seen you."

"You seem to recall? Have you been here before or not?" The woman looked at Severus Snape in a most suspicious way as if he had just sprouted wings and tail.

Severus decided to change tactics and to try his best to put into good use his barely existing social skills and capacity to be polite, which he occasionally had to use at work if he didn't want his fellow Transfiguration Professor Minerva McGonagall to turn him into an inanimate object.

"I believe so," said Severus suddenly very unsure about remembering anything properly.

"We have many clients, Sir. However, we haven't met in person as I have just returned from Brasil to help my father with his business. I used to live there with my husband. He died several years ago."

"I'm so sorry to hear that, Madam," the empty reply came with a hint of real emotion and regret of being impertinent to this woman.

"How could you be? We haven't even met. I thank you but I do not require your sympathy," she snorted in a mocking tone, clearly despising his attempt at small talk. "Who are you anyway?"

"My name is Severus Snape and I teach potions at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I may come and buy supplies here more regularly so perhaps we should get acquainted," continued now angry Severus in a hateful tone that would give cause to the entire class of first years to burst into tears and run out of his classroom.

The female seller kept eyeing him with distrust and loathing Severus Snape came to expect from people who ever bothered to consider his physical attributes from the bottom of his robes to his lank black greasy hair. After a while, she seemed to have relented.

"Well, then, Mr Snape, I am Val Peverell, at your service," she said with cold politeness.

In that instant the male seller returned with his order and wrapped it in fine dark blue paper with a pattern of silver stars, somewhat more luxurious than required for a decent apothecary.

"Father, please meet Mr Snape," said Val curtly.

"Ignotus Peverell, at your service."

"Professor Snape, Mr Peverell," Snape corrected him in a stern tone noticing briefly that the shape of Mr Peverell somehow shifted as if he was and was not in the room at the same time. Severus did not believe in miracles, or in any deity, wizarding or Muggle. Hence he knew there had to be a rational magical explanation for the strangeness of the shop's owner and his own most probably false memory of ever visiting it before.

"Slytherin, I reckon, always maintaining the appearances and pursuing their own goals. Please excuse me if I'm wrong", commented Mr Peverell merrily, "Myself I was in Huffelpuff, graduated in 1942, I just wanted to embrace everybody I met and I didn't much care for either cunning, intellect or bravery… That's how I became a shopkeeper I guess, for wanting to work with people."

"I am the Head of the Slytherin house at Hogwarts" retorted Severus trying to suppress his extreme annoyance at being addressed so familiarly. "I assume your charming daughter was in Hufflepuff as well. How curious that I don't recall her. We should have been in school at approximately the same time."

"I went to Chile Academy for Advanced Witchcraft, Mr Snape. A much better school if you ask my opinion. My father told me about Hogwarts houses but I don't recognize myself in any of them," said Val in an arrogant tone of one despising English education system.

"If you want a hint, Mr Snape, I could never imagine her in Hufflepuff. She's way too stubborn for that. It runs in the family on her mother's side," said Peverell with conviction.

"Dad, let's not annoy _Professor_ Snape with our stories. I believe that he was leaving," Val smiled to Snape ushering him through the door before he could continue the conversation. Mr Peverell yelled behind him: "Have a goody good day! We can chat some more next time!"

Severus let himself being shoved out with even more questions in his mind than before he entered the shop. He wondered what Hogwarts house the daughter or her mother for that matter would have been in while Apparating in direction of Hogwarts. He considered the words of the Unspeakable, a short old man, a few black hairs… Black of chestnut? Did she say her name was Val? She had brown chestnut coloured hair. Peverell was an old name but Snape believed that they have all died out. They were from Godric's Hollow, like Potters and Dumbledores. He put a mental note to check the information on the old man in Hogwarts yearbooks. There was something so wrong, so very wrong about Peverell and son, other than the shop being run by Peverell and daughter. Severus could smell it, he was sure of it. He went to the dungeons to put his new herbs in a storage closet admiring again the elegant wrapping paper of the parcel.

Later on, at night, while brewing the Draught of the Living Dead from his newly purchased ingredients in the mouldy peace and quiet of the dungeons, he paused to discard the wrapping and froze.

The paper exhibited the constellation of Canis Major and burning in the middle of it was the brightest star of them all.

The Dog Star.

Sirius.

The Potions Master did something he hadn't done for years, since his mother died. Softly, he said a Muggle prayer for the dead, may they all rest in peace. Snape had a premonition he was going to join them soon.

And he found it was a much better idea to pray than to allow himself to cry over dead enemies.


	3. Chapter 3 Acquaintance

I don't own Harry Potter.

OliveB thank you for the review

Thanks to anyone who might be reading.

**Chapter 3 Acquaintance**

Sirius woke up and saw a pair of eyes, bright blue like the sky on a summer day.

He stared at the girl, or rather a young woman with long blond hair that could belong to the Malfoys if it wasn't for the slightest touch of orange gleam that clung to it like a fiery mist. Her eyes were narrow and full of light, flickering with satisfaction.

He felt overwhelmed by desire to break out and talk to somebody even if this woman was clearly either a product of his crazed mind or otherwise a creature of the afterlife to which he now must belong. More credit went to the hallucination theory given his late life of solitary house imprisonment in company of an evil house elf. Well, to dream of beauty surely could not hurt him because how could any harm come to someone who had already died?

Thinking of nothing in particular Sirius turned his head and tried to move. Soon he found he was too weak to stand up, so instead he buried his right cheek in soft folds of light grey fabric of her skirts, inhaling the slightly bitter scent of something sharp and pungent, a herbal smell, mixed with a touch of freshly ground spices from distant lands. He took a mental note to ask her what it was one day. The smell reminded him vaguely of the smoking Amortentia love potion they had to brew in their 6th year in Hogwarts. He has never met a person exhaling a remotely similar odour.

He noticed that the robes she wore were quite old fashioned even for pure blood wizarding standards. Very broad, they were hiding her figure from tip to toe as if showing her toes, covered by the robes and pointed dark slippers, might be a mortal sin she could not afford to commit.

"Are you a wizard?" the girl asked.

"I used to be. I'm not sure what I am now," the man muttered. "What is this place?" he asked, slowly rising to seated position with great effort.

Glancing sideways he registered that the room was very large and a small dirty window above the painting extremely small. All kinds of obsolete antiquities lay scattered around and next to the walls. The visitor would first notice a pair of large ominous mirrors, which looked alive and eyeing each other. There was also a gruesome looking candelabrum with seven dragon heads occasionally spitting some fire, various lanterns, small tools, quite some very old-fashioned kitchenware and a pile of books and rolled parchments neatly arranged in one of the corners.

"I don't know. I have lived here for a while. All I know is that I cannot leave. We must be close to the sea though. You can tell by the smell," Ariana explained sincerely what she knew about their whereabouts.

His good mood melted down. The room he was in was cramped to say the best even without the two of them. Had there been a touch of green it might have resembled his hated home, abandoned for years after his mother finally died, polluted with old age and dark magic. Luckily in some aspects this house was very different and its luminous white washed walls helped holding Sirius's anger at bay, but nothing could ever hold off his regrets for very long, nothing at all ever since James and Lily were murdered.

Sirius firmly believed that he would see them, his best friends, when he died. Not another dusty, closed and mouldy room, oppressive as his parents' house or even a bit more because it was unbearably foreign and strange. A feeling of unfamiliar oddity hovered all over the place making his heart grow cold. He had never seen a place like that and he didn't like it a single bit.

"Great", he thought aloud, "at least I will be spending the cursed eternity with a beautiful phantom and not all alone"

"What are you talking about?" his companion made a half frightened smile.

Ariana wasn't sure what to think of the man in front of her. He was very tall, with overgrown hands and a lithe figure of a predator. If he was an animal, he would be a quadruped or perhaps an eagle. The man's dark curls and a set of haunted pale grey eyes reminded her of somebody but she could not pinpoint of whom. Dead eyes. Old eyes. She recalled a very old man visiting her father when she was maybe 5 years old. Was she imagining things? The old man had also called her beautiful several years later, the first one and the only ever to say so... after the incident...

Later on no one had called her beautiful until now. The Muggles called her _the little witch_ as if it was the highest offence and not a simple fact and Gellert just coldly informed her that she had been plain, no more, no less: he was doing her a great favour by teaching her to know her body.

"Come," she addressed the stranger with bravery she didn't feel, taking his hand before he could protest, "you haven't eaten since you arrived."

She pulled him up and supported him, leading him towards her small private chamber, where she kept her now meagre food supplies and cherished her greatest treasure, a window to the outside world warded by all kind of spells but still somewhat bigger and cleaner than the very small one in the much larger room with the painting. She made him sit down and offered some food.

Sirius noticed that the girl almost equalled him in height and he was by no means a short man. She was probably the tallest girl he had ever seen.

She went on explaining in a dull tone: "You appeared next to that Muggle painting of Nativity in the bigger room a few days ago. At first I was afraid of you. See, this house is warded. I believe that my brothers did it to keep me safe. The house created an enclosure for you, a sort of cell, as soon as you arrived. I could see you through the walls, but you could not see me. I tried… I tried to do magic and bring down the wall but I couldn't, not until today. You know the rest. "

"Why did you bother?" his expression darkened and Ariana found she couldn't make herself to look at him anymore when he became so unreasonable.

"I don't know! As you went calmer instead of angry with the passing of time, I thought that maybe you were not that bad," she whispered suddenly afraid of what he would do to her once he gained some strength.

"You can go away now if you wish. Return to wherever you came from. Disappear. Vanish. Did you hear me? I want to be alone," Sirius dismissed her as a pouting child all the while helping himself to some food and already feeling much better in his skin. There were advantages of having spent 12 years in prison: he could adjust to being deprived of food and water and replenish himself with nutrients afterwards much faster than the ordinary human.

"Why would anyone want to be alone by choice?" she said sadly and turned away from him facing the wall.

"I hate pretence. You are not real, you see. You are just a fragment of my crazy mind. I thought that in dying there would be peace! I thought that I would see my friends…" he went on rambling, upset about the whole situation.

"What are you trying to say?" she wondered again wriggling her hands one into another and gathering courage to look at him again.

He realized he had been shouting and continued in a calmer tone: "No use pretending, you see, I haven´t been with a girl for a while and now my mind is playing tricks on me recreating a beautiful lady in my proximity. So, there you are, you're _my_ fantasy and I presume that I can do whatever I like with you."

"Let's check out that assumption," continued Sirius, malignant and completely out of line, so preposterous that he looked almost inhuman in his disdain.

He moved arrogantly closer to her. She flinched towards the wall and her knees went soft.

Sirius towered over her as she slid down to the floor. He gently touched her face and leaned in to kiss her, without any emotion or desire, a simple experiment to perform, just like testing a new spell or a potion. Her face felt warm… She couldn't be real now, could she? Pig-headedness being one of the main characteristics of the Blacks, and of Sirius in particular, he proceeded with his mindless intention to kiss her just to prove his point: she was nothing more but an illusion of his febrile mind.

A gale of energy blasted him all the way back to the nocturnal Muggle painting and firmly to the ground. The transparent wall was back except that he could still see her now. They were separated again and the girl was shaking in anger.

"_Your_ fantasy, am I?" she yelled back for the first time in righteous anger. "_You _are certainly no fantasy of mine!"

Sirius laughed, this time happily and from his heart, all ambition and arrogance gone from his manners, not bothered in the least with being pushed away: "That was brilliant!"

The woman he created in his dreams was fierce and he was suddenly reluctant to further discuss the subject of his imagination with her.

"What's so funny?" she continued, enraged, "you'll see when my brothers come. They might as well kill you. I will encourage them. I should have never talked to you. You are the same like the rest of them! And if my brothers don´t kill you, their friend Gellert will!"

"Gellert, is that your boyfriend?" Sirius cackled, immediately ashamed as his croaking voice echoed from the walls so similar to deranged squeaks of cousin Bella.

Ariana didn't answer. To tell the truth, she didn't know what the term boyfriend meant. Young proper ladies, Muggle or witches alike, had fiancées or husbands. And Gellert was neither. She had heard from friends of her mother when she was a little girl that some married ladies had lovers. But no one bothered to explain to Ariana what that was either and the expression remained guarded and mysterious, surrounded with secrecy and laughter of grown up witches and women.

"Gellert is my lover," she said stubbornly, not having a faintest idea what it meant, but it had a good effect on the unknown man who suddenly seemed abashed.

"I'm sorry", he said flatly. "I didn't mean to offend you."

Uncomfortable silence reigned in the room. The odour of freshness evaporated leaving naked despair in Sirius's mind, always lurking from the corners to take over and pull him into the everlasting abyss of regrets. Sirius may have said he wanted to be alone but nothing was further than what he wished in truth. Even if the girl was clearly overreacting over one small attempt to kiss her.

"Could you talk to me again? I will behave as if you were real, a real lady, I promise," he said, indifferently.

He stumbled to the shiny transparent barrier between them and tried to grasp her hands. She was still shaking violently and her blue eyes glared with rage.

"Please," he said and looked her directly into her eyes again.

After a long time she moved one of her hands to touch one of his. As she did that, they were in the same room again, fingers intertwined.

"I _am_ sorry," he repeated, blushing for no reason as when he was a little boy and his mother would catch him exploring the dark objects in their family house.

She didn't speak.

"Let´s start at the beginning. My name is Sirius. Do you have a name?"

"Ariana," she whispered.

The commotion of their row stirred one of the dragon-heads of the giant seven-headed candelabrum into life. They went carefully back to the bigger window avoiding its fire spurts which flew away to scorch the frame of one of the large mirrors. For a long moment they were eating in silence.

The landscape in front of the house was desolate. The flat moors were overgrown by low grass and irregular harsh scrubs that have seen better days.

Somewhere in the distant blue horizon there ought to be the sea. Sirius was reminded of Azkaban, the closeness of the ocean could always be felt but it could never be seen. Until the day he turned into the scrawniest dog ever to walk this earth, squeezed himself out through the bars of his cell door and swam until he almost died.

Sirius shivered lightly as he made a discovery of what the love potion meant for him. It smelled like the sea. He should have known it before. The sea had granted him exit from Azkaban. And the only thing Sirius has ever been in love with was freedom.

He unwillingly remembered waking up with his head in Ariana's lap. As far as he could remember no one has ever cuddled him. His mother was cold and distant even before she hated and disinherited him. Other women mostly wanted something from him, the good looks, the popularity, the thrill of danger in being with the outcast when he had been on the run from home or from the Ministry, or simply a ride on his flying motorbike.

He soon found that he could not relate to any of them. Only his friends could read him as an open book, James, Remus and Peter – even Peter the traitor!

And Harry…

Merlin, how he hoped that Harry was alive and well!

He concluded he must have been losing his wits after all if what he was imagining for himself in afterlife was being taken care of like a baby. Creating a rebellious huge lady that was not obeying his every whim in doing that job was another sign that something had gone seriously wrong in his head. Tall girls were never his type.

Ariana for her part may have been a freak and her magic broken but she adored reading. She suddenly remembered the old book on wizard transportation and travelling including the section marked as speculative and unverified, dealing with long distance space and time travel.

The painting, she realised. He must have come through that painting, Merlin knows from where.

Gellert firmly believed that the painting was not magical and he was a more powerful wizard than any of her brothers. He laughed at Albus's stupid belief that the painting was special and said he gave it to their father the same way another guest could have brought flowers or a bottle of Firewhisky.

All things considered Ariana's father Percival was still fond of the work of art and he was one of the world's greatest collectors of unorthodox and misused magical objects. He bid Albus leave the painting to Ariana while he was being shipped to Azkaban, calling it a whim of an old man wishing to leave his ill daughter a legacy of a kind. He must have said something else to Albus who decided for once to obey their father but Ariana was no longer there to listen to their conversation as she passed out from crying and was given a sleeping draught to calm down.

Ariana decided to find out where Sirius had come from while he went on believing he was dead. Once reassured of his good intentions, she would tell him the truth. An inner voice whispered to her maliciously: "But then he will dump you, silly".

Despite great effort to ignore it, Ariana's unease grew at the thought that Sirius would surely leave her if he knew that he had that possibility. No one in their right mind would want to stay with her, would they? Gellert was an exception but she always suspected that he had never been in his right mind.

Unless she could be Sirius's fantasy, the one he had been so thrilled to see when he woke up. Gathering all her courage and fighting her usual revulsion to human touch she approached the man seated on the floor from his back and pulled him towards her with both arms, gently laying his head in her lap again. She avoided another spurt of dragon fire as she walked, happy about the damage to the second gruesome mirror she would've gladly disposed of but it was impossible to destroy most magical objects she inherited.

Sirius was taken by surprise, arms and neck stiff from sitting on the floor. Relaxing on her skirts for the second time that day he stretched his body on the flat surface, feeling ready to drowse after his first meal in seven days.

And for the first time in 14 years Sirius found he could just let go. For the shortest of moments he forgot about James and Lily, his guilt and his regrets. He forgot the fight against Voldemort and he nearly forgot about Harry.

He looked into the pair of vivid blue eyes twinkling above him and smiled.

Ariana's lips curved in a mischievous grin, happy about her deception. No one had ever told her how similar she was in character to her brother Albus. If someone had and if she could command her magic, they would have been severely hexed because Ariana was convinced that she was a mirrored image of her beloved brother Aberforth, a much better man and wizard in her opinion. Her mind feverishly jumped forward contemplating the need for a good plan to hide Sirius once Gellert would eventually return to bring her new supplies and pester her with his offers of marriage.

Wishing to take the experiment one step further, she was at first very embarrassed at her thoughts. She wondered if that was how Gellert felt about her, in his ever present desire to oversee her every move.

"Let's get some sleep", she said, blushing furiously, a most improper phrase for a young lady from a respectable wizarding family, while helping Sirius on his feet and leading him towards a pile of textiles a bit further on the floor which was her makeshift bed, since the real bed gave her creeps and bad memories. She avoided sleeping in it whenever she was alone.

For Ariana was not a lady. She was ruined, first by three young Muggle boys and then by Gellert. No one would ever ask for her hand in marriage. Obviously, Gellert still wanted to marry her, but she suspected he wanted it for a reason not related to her person at all, most likely a sinister reason she preferred not to know anything about.

Ariana suddenly realised that she would only let that marriage happen over her dead body.

She almost pushed a weakened Sirius into the pile noticing his curious look towards her. Feeding her courage from his looks she went to the most distant corner of the room and almost got burned by another burst of dragon fire while changing from her daytime robes into a night gown in one of the darkest corners, behind a box with jewels and a pile of kitchenware. The gown was a lighter shade of grey than her robes, embroidered with a pattern of miniature silver moons. The soft thin fabric fell down hiding her entire body once more and long wide sleeves fluttered as she walked, rustling like leaves in the autumn wind. Gracious toes were protruding at the bottom revealing the tiniest portion of two thin bare feet.

She slowly returned to Sirius and lay down next to him, leaving an armful of space between them.

Then she waited, paralysed, asphyxiated, afraid, expecting him to start behaving like those Muggles, or like Gellert did, offering herself for whatever came.

Her fear was primeval.

It burned and it stung like a sharp blade stuck immobile inside her throat, able to cut her lifeline in every second. She wanted to throw up, but she could not. Breathing was increasingly difficult.

Her mind dwelt frantically on how it was going to be with him, the stranger. Would he be gentle as Gellert in his better days? Would he beat her up first like the Muggles did?

All of a sudden she wished she truly was a fairy from her childhood stories. For the fairies could make the hero move the mountains for them and liberate them from their enemies. Ariana knew little and every day less of the human society, growing up secluded for most of her life, but she has learned way too much about enchanted dungeons for body and mind. One could never break free alone. Not from Gellert in any case.

She stiffened again and gasped for air, waiting for the inevitable move of the man lying peacefully next to her.

Sirius just yawned and pulled her in a clumsy brotherly hug, keeping a bit of a distance between them. He relaxed, occasionally patting her shoulders.

She felt the man's breathing slowing down. Before she knew it, they both fell asleep.

The room was filled with night whispers, obsessive and wild. Shapeless beings peered at the sleeping couple from the depths of the painting framed by a pointed arch, wondering who had woken them up from a thousand years long sleep and why.


	4. Chapter 4 Green Fields of the Mind

I don't own Harry Potter and I never will.

Thank you for the precious gift of reviews.

And thank you for reading.

**Chapter 4 Green Fields of the Mind**

Professor Snape's investigation of the Veil of Death reached a dead end. He would rarely admit that he could not move any further without assistance but that was the unadorned truth. It was almost the end of the school year. He knew for a while that some time soon he would have to commit an atrocity promised to an old friend, following an act of emotional extortion that even Molly Weasley would have been ashamed of. After the conversation with Albus, Severus felt as if both of them deserved to wear one of the infamous Weasley jumpers in kitschy family style colours and perhaps a party hat marking them as worse dunderheads than even the most stupid among the students.

There was also a tiny issue of an Unbreakable Vow Severus had sworn meaning his death if he failed. He very much wanted to complete his secret personal project of retrieving Sirius Black from the Veil, if that was possible at all, prior to his suicidal mission of killing Dumbledore for the greater good.

Almost a full year of brooding brought him no closer to the clue except that he was fairly certain that the Veil was rather a time-travel than a space-travel instrument. And wherever Sirius was, blood magic was referred to as a likely clue towards reversal of such spells with the intention to save persons lost in deep inaccessible spaces governed by the darkest magic. Severus devised a complex incantation and a special potion to bring Sirius back but in order to succeed he would need a close living relative, a parent or a sibling, willing to project the essence of their living soul onto the surface of the Veil in the middle of the spell and call Sirius back. There was no likely candidate to do this as both Sirius's parents and his only brother had died.

Obviously, the procedure, if discovered, would be deemed highly illegal by the Ministry and it meant a sure ticket to Azkaban. Severus snorted knowing that his other master the Dark Lord controlled Azkaban anyway so it did not matter too much. The times were favouring experimenting with illegal magic or creating new one. And the best chance Severus had to bring Sirius back would be on the anniversary of his death, coming in two weeks. Severus considered asking Sirius's cousin Andromeda, or even her daughter Nymphadora for help, but the relation was not close enough.

Consulting Hogwarts yearbooks on the Peverell family gave no spectacular results either. The family seemed to have liked the name Ignotus which appeared in every generation. The last Ignotus effectively graduated from Hogwarts in 1942 and was by all standards a completely non-remarkable student, not quite a disaster like Neville Longbottom, but a dull mediocre individual who did nothing noteworthy in his 7 years at school. His marks were average and he didn't even serve a detention in all that time. Perhaps this last detail should have raised Snape's interest as almost no student managed to graduate from Hogwarts without serving at least one detention, but everything else about Ignotus Peverell was so dull that he just disregarded it and closed the dusty yearbook again with a reckless feeling of lack of fulfilment and an almost certainty that something was escaping his shrewdness when it came to the Peverells despite all his efforts to uncover the truth.

One morning when he returned to the dungeons after another sleepless night trying to find something of interest concerning Ignotus Peverell in the library, he found an owl from Dumbledore carrying a piece of blackened parchment saying: _In two weeks_.

The time had come.

Severus was overtaken by a strong desire to break all his jars and vials with expensive and rare potions and potion ingredients the Muggle way and to cause havoc in his perfectly ordered working space.

Before he could give in to these fairly basic urges caused by long term frustration, his legs decided to carry him out of the castle to the grounds of Hogwarts.

A crack of Apparating resounded in a street full of trees leading in the direction of the Ministry of Magic. It was very early in the morning and the scent of thousands tender white blossoms in the trees, bathed in the bright daylight of one of the first summer days, felt deeply disturbing.

Severus Snape couldn't explain, not even to himself, why he decided to take a walk to the strange new shop in the immediate vicinity of the Ministry on a warm day. He was never one for sunlight and he enjoyed the damp darkness of his dungeons where he spent most of the time as a teacher. They were mostly safe. And he was left in the privacy of his musings working hard at the same time on potions for school and for the Dark Lord, developing the latest strategies for defeating either the Light side or the Dark side in the ongoing war, depending on who ordered his services at a given moment.

But on that particular day even Snape needed warmth and careless feeling of being alive more than ever. There was very little time of relative freedom left before going into hiding and before all people he knew and very few people he respected would start loathing him much more than usual.

The known feeling that the shop was new and that it only appeared in London a year ago filled up his mind as he was approaching and trying to control such thoughts.

Since last year it has been well established that the shop had stood there forever. As far as he knew Severus was the only wizard still haunted by the suspicion concerning the veracity of that fact. The paranoia of his spy profession must have messed with his perception.

It was not only that the shop had always been there, but it had recently become a place of refuge and healing for hurt Death Eaters in exchange for generous rewards. The healing spells were at the far more advanced level than those used at St Mungos hospital for magical illnesses and no questions were asked regarding the nature and the origin of injuries.

The Dark Lord intended to kill the shop-owner and his daughter as soon as the war was over. The rumour in Voldemort's inner circle had it that Peverell the pure-blood fathered a Squib daughter on an unsuspecting Muggle woman. Severus could not say what he loathed more, the fact that the Peverells made a living by helping Death Eaters recover and attack more innocent victims, or the fact that they were blind and could not see what the Dark Lord had in stock for them as a pay back for their services.

Snape didn't go to see the Peverells since the first time. There were better suppliers of potions ingredients in Diagon Alley who didn't help Death Eaters, or stir unwanted sensations of _déjà vu_ of any kind.

But that morning was different. There were precious few days left for Snape to satisfy his gnawing curiosity.

He noticed Val, perched on the window sill, her hair in a tight bun, her robes plain black and perfectly straight. Her eyes were closed: she seemed to be absorbed in her thoughts and thoroughly enjoying the sun. She stirred as Severus approached.

"Good morning, Professor, what can I do for you? You haven't stopped by for a while!" she said in a rather serious demeanour, in stark contrast with playful defiance he remembered from the time when they met.

"It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?" he replied stiffly, feeling silly and regretting he was there.

"I could not imagine that what brings you here is the beauty of the morning," she replied, coming towards the door and letting him in, still absorbed in her thoughts whatever they were.

He was all of a sudden compelled to access her mind through Legilimency, no, not to read her thoughts, but to get a glimpse of her true character which eluded him. As soon as he cast Legilimens in his mind, wand hidden in his robes, and pointed in her direction, the image of green meadows on a sunny day invaded his senses, the smell of flowers and freshly mowed grass after the rain. He could inhale, touch and taste the sensation. He felt like a man dying to whom someone administered the elixir of life.

"This is not a very polite thing to do, Mr Snape," Val looked right through him as if he was made of water, undeterred by his intrusion, inside her shop filled with darkness, different than the bright light outside and the imaginary landscape as day and night.

"Stop it!" she barked.

Severus remained impassive as if he hadn't been performing a highly illegal curse on the unwilling individual. Val didn't seem to be physically hurt by his intrusion and he just couldn't help himself taking what little joy he could get before a dreadful phase in his life leading to his inevitable messy death would begin. He stared nastily at Val and showed no sign of weakness, no hint of either excusing himself or leaving. He took a step forward in her mind and walked on a meadow when his reason, drugged for several minutes, kicked in again and sounded an alarm.

It was not possible to create such an elaborate landscape as an defensive Occlumency shield. So what was he seeing? Her memories? The landscape was too perfect to be a memory of any real plot of land as far as he could tell. Her daydream? Snape was more bewildered than ever. A butterfly landed on his hand and the most natural thing to do was to give in to the overwhelming beauty, whatever its origin, and take a deep breath.

A pair of arrogant cold black eyes pierced Val as if mental aggression towards her was his acquired right, violating her private space to secure a healing for their soul, long time due and never received. Val shrugged but she didn't break the eye contact. Severus's vision of Val's mind slowly darkened and showed a blurry room with beds, some of them occupied, walls lined with shelves full of books, large stock of potions, neatly stored ingredients of all kinds and magical healing equipment.

"You are the one running the hospital for Death Eaters that the Dark Lord's followers have become so fond of and not your father?" Severus blurted in disbelief, still not breaking the eye contact.

"Yes. Someone has to. It's right here in the back. Do you wish to see it? You were once here as well when you were injured. Just that you were too unconscious to notice. The Dark Lord was displeased with the continued failures of someone called Draco and punished you instead. It took me 3 days to patch you. Afterwards we shipped you to Hogwarts tied to a broom. I take note that you survived. How convenient," Val spoke as if she was convinced that Professor Snape would finally stop looking at her, seeing how she personally cured some of the most evil wizards in existence and hid them from the ever less watchful eyes of the Ministry of Magic right below their feet.

"I guess a thank you would be in order then," Severus grinned like an idiot maintaining the eye contact, "from a fellow Death Eater."

Before she knew he grabbed her, grasped her left forearm and pulled up the sleeve revealing unblemished tender skin, damaged only with some tiny traces that could have been caused by the regular exercise of a magical healer profession or negligent daily care of some larger magical creature. Snape wondered if she shared Hagrid's taste for pets as he mustered his most murderous tone and said: "Except that you are not one. Should I inform the Dark Lord of his… omission?"

Slowly, the dark mark on her forearm formed and danced before his eyes, as real as his own, always hidden deep under many layers of thick black robes as if covering the accursed imprint could make Snape forget his greatest mistake. Her mark was at once as real as the green land where he yearned to stay only a little bit longer before his vision returned to the usual darkness of his own mind.

"Am I not?" she taunted him. "Is that the best you've got? Threatening me?"

Severus let her go with a feeling of _déjà vu _at her last sentence and the defiant look she gave him. He could swear that she had no Dark Mark. Yet now the Mark was there and so was the idea in his mind that the Dark Mark had always been there, just like the shop they were standing in must have always been in London. Except that Snape could not believe it, any of it. It was all plain wrong.

Still not breaking the eye contact he shuddered and admitted inwardly to himself that he had been defeated. She could not, she would not help him. It was all an illusion. And he didn't want to spend his last free days chasing after dreams of any kind.

As soon as he thought that, the image projected from her mind returned to the beautiful landscape which filled his heart with peace.

Severus could swear it was she intruding his consciousness now and not the other way around. Yet she didn't cast a Legilimens spell nor any other spell Snape had known. It felt like she had no magic, like she was indeed a benign Squib with peculiar imagination. His black eyes widened in surprise and for a brief second when he was not protecting his thoughts from others Val could read in his eyes without using any magic, plain as the day, the depth of his despair.

There was only one thing left to say. Severus used the word scarcely and if he did, he almost never meant it.

"Thank you," he said in a completely changed sincere voice after what seemed like long hours of contemplation when he finally let his eyes drop, standing up to leave the shop.

"Wait!" she called after him. "I know what you are up to. And you must suspect that my father and I are up to the same. You are still trying to bring Sirius Black back from the Veil of Death, aren't you? My father and I have been thinking about the solution but he couldn't devise the proper incantation or establish the best timing to give it a try. Maybe we have a chance if we work together."

When Severus looked at her again, not believing his ears, Val swayed on her feet suddenly looking old and frail as if she was 20 years older than he. The lines around her eyes and on her forehead deepened and her skin suddenly gained an olive hue. But she seemed sincere and content, radiating a contagiously positive mood he hasn't seen her in yet.

"Wait," she repeated supporting herself on the walls as she scurried to the back room from where she soon returned with a large manuscript entitled: _"Illegal and Untested Transportation Devices for Witch and Wizard, Bouncing Through Space and Time: Enchanted Animals, Crystal Time Bubbles, Veils of Death and many more."_

Dusk coloured the air outside and the shop sank further into almost intimate darkness. Severus indifferently watched the spiders patiently weaving their nets in the far corners as Val sat down and continued babbling in an excited voice:

"It's an incomplete copy my father made long time ago from a scroll lost to the wizarding world. He found it in the house of one of his schoolmates, he never wanted to admit which one," Val commented as she turned the page dedicated to "Veils of Death" and read: "_In order to forcefully call back a traveller, a parent or a sibling has to face the Veil, on the correct date, and sing the incantation describing the key elements in the traveller's life._ How far did you go with the incantation?"

"I am certainly no poet, Mrs Peverell, however, I was vaguely acquainted with Black and I dared to put on paper a few statements reflecting the key elements in his life. I assume that the correct timing would be the anniversary of his death, which is in 2 weeks," Severus's voice returned to being nasty and low but inwardly he couldn't believe he was actually sharing all that information with another human being. Most of them were not worthy of their existence according to Snape scale of values in any case.

"Wonderful!" she was beaming. "We'll go and get him!" She giggled as most girls did in the presence of Black and Snape was suddenly so glad to disappoint her. "Unfortunately, Mrs Peverell, the spell requires the support of old blood magic to make it work and even your book confirms my initial assumption that the blood has to come from a close relation. Sirius's parents and brother are all dead and I don't think that the blood of his cousins comes close enough."

Val continued speaking, not disappointed at all and overly enthusiastic: "My father is a master in charms. One of the best in England. I could let you read one of his volumes on blood magic, he theorised that the impact of the blood of close kin can be reconstructed if one can retrieve some of the victim's possessions. It's a method frequently used in healing. We need something Sirius touched and used himself, even if it was a lifetime ago. But your incantation has more chance to work than any we would have come up with as neither my father nor I have ever met Sirius before. Another element we couldn't figure was that the anniversary of the disappearance was the key, we were operating on the basis that one of the magical days in the year would suffice, such as the Halloween or Muggle Christmas."

"That is a possibility, but the illegal volume on reversal of darks spells that I happen to possess is very clear that the best guarantee for the reversal would be if the same sorcerer on the same date attempted to reverse the effects while endowing his wand with some blood from the victim," Severus continued calmly as if he was teaching a bunch of first years how to brew a most uninteresting potion.

"But then we also need the person who cast the spell throwing Sirius into the Veil, forgive me, but wasn't that…" Val went pale as a corpse.

"Bellatrix Lestrange. The Dark Lord's right arm. And his special… _friend," _Severus sneered thinking of the unhealthy relationship the two were having. It was one of those things that he absolutely didn't want to know any details about yet couldn't help but notice Bellatrix's badly hidden impulses to _touch_ their Master, possibly the only creature on Earth uglier and more repulsive than Severus Snape.

Val paced around the room like a beast in cage and counted the days. Two weeks was very little time to prepare the ritual to save Sirius. Severus got lost in dark thoughts about being on the run soon, with no easy access to the Ministry or to the Veil.

"I will help you, Mr Snape, for the blood magic part, but you have to help me first with something entirely different. I need a contact of a person able to handle dragons, who would be willing to come and work with me this summer. I will not answer why I need such a person so don't bother to ask," Val said, pulling Snape out from the abyss of his thoughts. "Furthermore, the person should preferably not be a Death Eater."

Snape was caught by surprise so he obeyed without thinking, took out his wand, conjured a Patronus and whispered to it: "Go to Charlie Weasley visiting his parents in the Burrow. Tell him to visit Mrs Val Peverell at Peverell&Son in London as soon as possible on an urgent Order business." A gracious silvery doe pranced away into the street among the trees chasing a few bees as it went.

"I'm glad that you asked today", said Snape, "as in a few days I might not be able to help you".

"What do you mean?" Val asked.

Severus just stared through her without blinking as if he was made of solid rock. Seeing that she wouldn't be getting any answers, Val continued with the business at hand.

"If we cannot get Mrs Lestrange to cooperate in a given time we could give it a try without her but we absolutely have to find some possessions of the victim to be able to proceed," said Val decisively closing the dusty tome in front of them with a clang that made two bats hanging asleep from the wooden carvings under the ceiling wake up for the night and nervously flutter their wings.

"Indeed. I could come and see you tomorrow night then," Severus said in his most neutral tone. "Bellatrix might visit with me as well and then we shall see. If I may inquire…" Severus paused significantly and fixated Val again with his black piercing eyes the way he kept on doing since their peculiar Legilimency encounter had started.

"Go ahead," said Val.

"Why do you want to help Sirius Black?"

"Oh, clearly, I am madly in love with him!"

Severus chuckled at the irony of her statement nevertheless harbouring the suspicion that she must have fancied Black in the past or read too much wizarding tabloids in general when she was willing to go that far to help him without knowing anything about the man. The rational part of Snape knocked at the back door of his mind reminding him that this didn't explain why her father would want to help Sirius, on the contrary, fathers of Sirius's short-lived would be girlfriends mostly wanted to hex him when they were all teenagers.

Thinking of it in detail, Black never actually had that many girlfriends, there must have been one or two as far as Severus recalled. His focus lay elsewhere, in his empty-headed friends and stupid enjoyment in being a blood-traitor, despising publicly the ways of his family.

Severus for his part tried to date a few Muggle girls over the years since Lily died but his relationships never went on for very long. Snape cared for them, in his way, but he never managed to admit to any of those girls the basic fact that he was a wizard, or show his real poisonous nature for which he was notorious in Hogwarts. It was a more benevolent and far less dangerous version of Snape that occasionally went out with girls but this only aggravated the condition that real Snape never satisfied fully any of his emotional urges or showed all of his nature to anyone, the only possible exception for the latter part being maybe Albus Dumbledore, his only friend and the person he was about to murder in cold blood.

And dating witches was not an option: Severus really didn't like younger ones and all those roughly his age saw him primarily as Snivellus, the horrible greasy git. Luckily Muggle girls frequently found his robes and even his hair different in a positive sense and kind of cool.

"See you tomorrow then, Severus," Val interrupted his chain of thoughts, his name an afterthought on her tongue as last traces of giddiness faded from her voice.

Severus reacted as one shot in the leg at her use of his first name. He abruptly stood up and stumbled out without a word before he could succumb again to an overwhelming yearning to invade her privacy without permission and get lost forever in the green fields of her mind.


	5. Chapter 5 Personalised Heaven

_I own nothing._

_Thanks to anyone who might be reading._

**Chapter 5 Personalised Heaven**

Ariana and Sirius woke up huddled together, much closer than they were when they fell asleep. The first rays of winter sun crept through the large window in Ariana's improvised living quarters, drawing a bright luminous trail all the way to the two human forms struggling against drowsiness on a heap of disparate textiles as their eyes started to hurt from too much light.

The morning chased the phantoms of the night and the strange whispers from the Veil. The inhospitable rooms of the small house looked almost pleasant and scattered magical objects tame: the nine dragons' heads on the candelabrum were snoring and two awful old-fashioned mirrors played a game of riddles with each other.

With the voices from the other side silenced, Sirius and Ariana were abandoned to their fate. They could not know it but the Veil was a one-way travelling ticket with no return and its temporary and fragile beneficial effects could not be made permanent according to the wisest of the wizards and the greatest of the warlocks who have studied it and recorded its properties. They left scrolls and scrolls of parchment explaining how the wizard who was to understand the mystery of the Veil and bend it to his will had not yet been born.

The Veil was a delayed but not less certain sentence to death.

Ariana was trying to open her eyes thinking that she should make some curtains before summer. White and yellow would do, she thought, the colours of the sunlight. Feeling very warm and at ease she remembered the day before and realised that a very pale skinny man was holding her. He may have been taller than her, she realised, which was truly rare as most of men she knew including Gellert were at least a little bit shorter. First she immediately went limp before turning completely stiff and very uncomfortable in his arms. Her gorge burned with fear again and she could not move.

Closing her eyes to ignore the circumstances, she forced herself to wriggle out of the makeshift bed, shivering, moving as far away as possible from the unwanted presence of the man.

Sirius.

She should remember his name. Her mind slowly cleared up as she realised he had not hurt her in any way. Not yet, the threatening voice said in her head, but he probably will. They are all the same, the voice whispered, get rid of him before he hurts you.

But the light of the morning was upon her and no harm could surely come to her in the golden warmth of the sun. All of a sudden she knew who Sirius reminded her of.

Ariana exclaimed without any sense for politeness or tact: "Are you related to Phineas Nigellus Black?"

Sirius stirred awake and stretched his rather long arms peacefully before answering her question in a slow motion, as one happy to do nothing and just stay where he was, perfectly at ease in his new surroundings, as if the rough textiles were the most luxurious bed he had ever slept in.

"You mean my great-great-grandfather and the most hated Headmaster of Hogwarts? How do you know about him? He died a long time ago," answered Sirius.

Ariana lied in the most convincing way, surprising herself with yet another new ability: "I must have seen his photograph in a book. Perhaps in Hogwarts, a History. I am very fond of reading. It's my favourite pastime."

The truth was that when she was about 5 years old an impressive looking elderly man with long raven hair visited her father introducing himself as Phineas Nigellus Black. He brought with him his granddaughter Norma. Ariana and Norma played in the garden and Ariana marvelled at having a friend while Phineas and Dad had long discussions about a mirror Dad was studying at the time, showing the person looking into it their greatest desires.

Two years later, after the Muggles had already attacked Ariana, Dad and she met Phineas and Norma again on a tea party at Malfoy Manor. Dad hated visiting the Malfoys but he considered it a necessary evil from time to time. She ran to play with Norma as usual only to be greeted by the cold look of disdain, typical of Blacks, her father would explain to her later on.

Lost in the corridors she heard Norma explaining to one of the Veela looking beautiful Malfoy cousins: "Imagine, she is ruined. No one will ever ask for her hand in marriage. And it was done by Mudbloods… Her magic is broken so she will not even get her Hogwarts letter…" The girls were giggling as if they were discussing some very exciting piece of good news or latest fashion for well-born witches.

Ariana ran to find her father and she never went to any party again. She made all mirrors in the Manor burst into pieces as she was trying to find her way out, having recourse to accidental magic in her desperate attempt to escape the maze of the Malfoy's ancestral domain. Digging deeper in the painful memory, she remembered a sad pale face of old Phineas Nigellus seeing them off and excusing himself formally to her father for Norma's behaviour. Blind, she thought. He was blind.

Soon thereafter Dad went after the Muggles to defend her lost honour and Ariana could have done nothing to prevent him. The horrific torture of that memory overtook her and she leaned on the wall to suppress it, giving Sirius a crazed look with glassy eyes while her hands wear searching nervously the wall for a point of anchor against falling. She was shaking and looking at Sirius in open dislike, bothered by his presence.

When the pain of the memory was finally over, she was struck by the realization that if Phineas Nigellus was the great-great-grandfather of the man she had just spent the night with than she could be Sirius's grandmother at least.

Sirius was from the future.

Ariana gave Sirius a look of utter shock and disbelief followed by a shrieking gasp.

"Right, I've frequently been told that I looked like a mass murderer, but no one has ever looked at me before as if I was closely related to the giant squid," said Sirius cynically.

She surprised him by a soft laugh as if his words have woken her up from a trance and the sound of her laugh in turn eased his heart. Making easy soft steps all around the cramped quarters she prepared them both a modest breakfast in no time.

The sun was much higher in the sky when they finished eating because Ariana made Sirius talk about himself. He would not say much except that all there was to know was that he died protecting his godson Harry Potter from some dangerous people called the Death Eaters who were working for a Dark Lord called Voldemort. She took good mental note of all those names and designations, feeling that they were somehow important to him in the greater scheme of things and perhaps to her as well.

When he asked about her life, Ariana explained how she had an unfortunate accident as a child damaging her ability to use magic. Without outwardly lying she hinted that she died in an explosion she caused. Imagining the horrible incident with her mother to make her fabrication sound more credible, she had to concentrate real hard not to relive again any of her traumas in great detail, afraid of what her bursts of uncontrolled magic could do. Looking at one of the two awful magic mirrors winning the game of riddles and boosting about it to another helped her stay focused and wall off the undesirable part of her soul, the one that had suffered beyond endurance.

Cold hands on her body, cold murmurs in her ears. There were waves of purple haze around her eyebrows during every Gellert's visit. His warm breath profaned her chest, covering it with malignant influence. Nothing was ever physically visible but it felt as if she had been showered in gore.

She could not tell Sirius what the Muggles and Gellert did to her. She could never speak to anybody about that. Her heart nearly stopped waiting for his reaction when she confessed that she was magically disabled.

Sirius just chuckled softly: "Right! Damaged, you say, right? You know, since we are stuck together, I sort of like that you're a bit mad. They always say insanity runs deep in my biological family. We can pretend we are family too. What do you say?"

She never answered but the pretence went on much better than any of them expected. They developed a routine of an old married couple too well acquainted with each other to feel any passion. They were doing the same things every day, discussing always different innocuous details from their past lives. They discovered they were both smart and that Sirius was also fond of reading even if he would never admit that out loud in so many words. She learned he hated the dark arts and he understood that she was naturally curious about them and the force they represented. For some reason he couldn't resent her curiosity where once he despised it in his own brother Regulus and regretted having pushed him away every day since his untimely disappearance without trace when Sirius was 18 and Regulus 16 years old.

Ariana and Sirius never went close to each other since that first night despite sharing the same bed, albeit always on a safe distance, respecting the boundary they established without ever discussing the need for it.

Gellert was nowhere to be seen, which was good, so Ariana didn't have to think of a way to hide Sirius, and bad because now there were two of them and they were running out of food. She would stay awake at night with obsolete wizarding cooking books and discovered that she could wandlessly perform basic charms to improve and extend their food supplies. She has never been able to do that before. She was so busy doing that and hiding what she was doing from Sirius that she didn't give much thought to this in reality extraordinary phenomenon for a witch proclaimed to be magically incapacitated by the greatest healers of her time.

After a week of sleepless nights and almost no food left to transfigure magically it occurred to her that maybe Sirius could actually walk out of the house and bring them some food as it was never warded against him. But would he ever return to her then? Not wishing to dwell on that subject she curled up on her place in bed and waited, sleepless, for another morning, thinking about her past and uncertain future.

Ariana had already found subtle ways to question Sirius about important wizarding figures claiming she never went to school, thus learning a lot of what her brother Albus would do in the future, as a leader of the efforts to defeat Voldemort. Such a pompous name, she thought. She knew that Albus was very powerful and it gladdened her heart that he did some good in the world. To her sadness, it seemed that Sirius has never met Aberforth and couldn't tell her anything about her favourite brother.

It was another beautiful morning when winter slowly melted into spring. Nevertheless Ariana felt on the edge when Sirius finally woke up. There was no food left for breakfast, real or magically enhanced. She had to tell him that perhaps he could leave the house to find sustenance and then she would wait for Gellert or for her death, alone.

Threading on very dangerous ground she asked the most important question she wanted to learn about the future before he left. She had never dared asking it before:

"I think that I've also read that before the war against Voldemort…" she noticed Sirius nodding towards her with respect when she pronounced the presumptuous name without flinching, "…Dumbledore had something to do with someone called Grindelwald… if I'm correct... I mean… I might be wrong…"

Sirius looked at her with new found pity as if she was much dumber than he thought. Then he proceeded with determined calm as if he was giving a very basic history lesson to a small child: "Haven't your parents ever bought you Chocolate Frog Cards? Albus Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard of our time and the only one Voldemort is afraid of because Dumbledore defeated the previous Dark Lord Grindelwald in a duel in 1945".

It took all of Ariana's self-control not to start screaming from joy that Albus actually did something truly righteous in his life and saw Gellert for what he was, a pig, except that pigs should get seriously offended by that comparison.

At that point Sirius started observing her in amazement and said: "Your eyes are alive now. They flash like lightning. I always try to say things that make them look like that."

"I didn't expect to have any success with basic history lessons though," he beamed at her as Gellert never did.

"Why do you care if I feel alive or not?" she asked, softly.

Sirius avoided answering the question. Instead he turned very active and muttered something that dead or not, he could try doing some magic just to practice and kill some time and _explore_ the possibilities if only he had his wand…

Ariana swallowed and dragged a long piece of wood from one of the many pockets of her inner robes.

"I'm sorry!" she stuttered. "I took it from you before you woke up. I forgot I had it, honestly!"

And she truly did forget – the necessary act of self-preservation was hidden in the endless dark pit of her soul. She wondered how many other memories lay there never to be brought forth.

Sirius gave a cry of joy not questioning her actions at all. In the next few hours he managed to transfigure the back room of the house they never used because it was windowless to look like an enclosed courtyard under the open sky with a small pool and fountain in the middle. He even transformed two old paintings of flowers in living plants in red clay pots, but he didn't manage to exit the house despite insistently prodding the walls both physically and with spells as if he wished to run away from Ariana as soon as possible, or so she told herself.

So much for getting us food, Ariana thought.

After a few hours of frantic activity and totally childlike behaviour, Sirius turned towards her and handed her back his wand!

"One more try!" said Sirius and seconds later there stood a large black dog glaring at her.

Ariana would have screamed if she didn't notice that the pale gleaming eyes of the animal were so similar to the eyes of the man who altered her life. The dog started wiggling his tail playfully.

"This is your Animagus form then?" Ariana said backtracking nervously when the dog approached her and nuzzled the border of her skirts. "Do you have a name?"

A man was squatted in front of her and Ariana's unease diminished, four large paw prints clearly visible behind him on the stretch he walked like a dog: "Well, that was Padfoot, if you really have to know, or Snuffles if you prefer that name. He's a really sweet dog, as long as he doesn't get any flies."

Ariana laughed and said without thinking: "Try getting out of the house as Padfoot. Maybe you could find us something to eat."

Good Merlin! She had said it. And he would leave. It was the most logical alternative.

"Your wish is my command," Sirius smirked and saluted her as if she was an army general, immediately losing his human shape.

The dog barked obediently, ran to the door and left passing Gellert's protective wards as if they were not in place! He will not come back, Ariana thought for the rest of the day rearranging her father's broken treasure collection from one room to another and watching the conjured fountain with tears in her eyes. Deep in the night she curled up alone on her bed of rags.

She woke up to the smell of tea and bacon and eggs. A handsome dark haired man in clean black robes was getting plates ready and trying very hard not to make any noise. His new attire was more similar to the gentlemanly fashion she was used to see than the worn once fancy blazer he arrived in from the future.

"Ugh, you're awake a moment too early. I wanted to surprise you," Sirius complained.

"Well, it was the smell– " Ariana said and was immediately interrupted.

"Are you an Animagus yourself? Heightened sense of smell…"

"No. I told you once that there was nothing special about me," she lied in a boring voice. Many things about Ariana could be considered different in the very least, or simply abnormal as decent society chose to label her unstable condition.

I lied again, she thought. Magic or no, she could sense him in the house, just like she could have smelled her brothers if they ever bothered to visit her. And Gellert, Gellert she could feel from even greater distance as soon as he _thought_ of visiting her.

She laughed at a very confused Sirius.

"You're allergic to eggs?" he asked, uncertain.

But Ariana was already helping him put food on the table and they soon had the tastiest and the longest breakfast ever.

A few mornings later, as they shared another copious meal Sirius had provided, Ariana realised that there was one topic about which he never talked about and that was his family. At first she was pleased as it saved her some explanations about her own but on that particular morning she needed to learn more. She was sure that he was withholding something important from her.

"What was your mother like?" she asked leaning towards him over empty plates.

"Dear old mother was the pure-blooded maniac like the rest of my family. All obsessed with helping Voldemort win the war. My own cousin killed me if I haven't mentioned that before," Sirius explained matter-of-factly making the story sound much sicker than if he was yelling or using a more emotional tone.

"And the worst thing of all is that I would have killed my cousin that day if she didn't get to me first. I hated her that much," Sirius spoke and turned his back to Ariana. "I would've become a killer like any of them. My _beloved_ family."

The house went deadly quiet as a tomb and all life seemed to have abandoned it.

"My family started well," Ariana felt obliged to volunteer some information to break the disturbing silence between them, "but in the end we were driven very far apart from each other. And the worst thing of all is that there is no Dark Lord we can blame for that. Only ourselves."

Sirius felt as if he had been overrun by his own flying motorbike in full speed. An entirely new emotion rose high above his constant inner turmoil of regrets for things lost, a sublimation of feeling that was devouring him softly from within every day since she had asked him why he cared if she felt alive. His insides began to boil and demand him to do something rash again. Something he would regret. To break the ugly mirrors with his bare fists and squash all seven dragon heads of the nasty candle holder to the wall would have been a good start.

Instead he just stood tall and stared at Ariana, yearning for something he did not know how to ask for, unable to utter a sensible word.

She wished he would look at her like that forever, as if she was whole and unblemished, and as if her very presence was easing his pain.

That night they hugged each other tightly when they went to bed as if it was the most natural thing to do.


	6. Chapter 6 The Healing Potion

I don't own Harry Potter.

I hope that someone is reading.

**Chapter 6 The Healing Potion**

The last rays of afternoon sun permeated the familiar herbal shop of the Peverell family, covering the dusty shelves with otherworldly glow. A young red-haired man stumbled in, nearly toppling over a jar of dragon heart strings on display next to the counter.

Val welcomed the sturdy young man who presented himself as Charlie Weasley, working with dragons in Romania. Then she went on explaining what she wanted without much of an introduction.

"Mr Weasley, thank you for coming on such a short notice. My father and I would have a need for your services. What I'm about to show you is somewhat irregular and I'll have to ask you for your utmost discretion."

Charlie coughed, embarrassed, he has spent too much time in a dragon reserve and was never one for socially required politeness: "I am somewhat surprised to be summoned here as I have heard strange rumours concerning what goes on in this place."

"What precisely did you hear, Mr Weasley?" Val asked, amused.

Charlie blushed but found the nerve to speak up his mind: "Well, people talk that Death Eaters are being healed in this place in exchange for a good reward, no questions asked. I would call that a somewhat irregular situation. I am telling you this so directly only because my family and I put trust in Professor Snape who asked me to come."

"Oh, I see. That well may be. It may even be that the Death Eaters are healed here without any reward, how do you feel about that?"

"I should better leave," Charlie stood up when a short chubby wizard walked into the room, obstructed his way out and shook his hand vigorously.

"Good afternoon, young man. I couldn't help overhearing you discussing with my daughter here. Look at you! I don't even have to ask who you are. Do give your father Arthur Weasley my regards when you see him. I've known him for many years, since Godric's Hollow. And I can assure you that while we do heal Death Eaters as we consider them to be only wizards after all, strayed, yes, but wizards, if you know what I mean, so, while we do heal them as well, I mean, we do not share their views of the world order. Would you at least consider my daughter's proposition before you pass the final judgement?" the old man tapped Charlie heartily on his back like a long lost son. His touch felt eerie, a child's touch, way too gentle for his ebullient behaviour and strong stature.

"If you lived in Godric's Hollow than you must have known the Potters?" asked Charlie cautiously.

"Good old friends they were, Charlus and Dorea, I was so sorry when their boy was killed. Then again I was out of country for a while but I have always kept this establishment here open."

"I will consider your proposal, but I won't promise anything," Charlie nodded, starting to retreat towards the door, tempted to run away from the lair of obviously lying and probably evil wizards. As far as Charlie knew, his father never came even close to Godric's Hollow.

"Well, as my father mentioned he used to live abroad and I myself have been abroad even longer than he. Effectively I returned to London to help him work in this shop a year ago using a somewhat unconventional mode of transport…" Val interrupted to prevent Charlie from leaving, reading his attempt correctly as he was trying to reach the door, careful not to stumble again over any goods at display in the shop.

"Don't tell me", Charlie snorted grabbing a door handle, "a Norwegian Ridgeback?"

"Er… a Brazilian Blue Devil actually. We used to live in Brazil."

"I have never seen that species," Charlie was suddenly interested and stopped at the door. Could seeing an unknown kind of dragon justify that he was dealing with Death Eaters or their supporters at the very least? "Still, I cannot help you. I would need stronger assurances that you do not support certain outlook on the wizarding world."

"Arthur is still a big fan of Muggle culture, isn't he?" asked Mr Peverell.

"That he is," Charlie confirmed.

"Son, if you return later this evening at let's say 23h, I will show you something that might ease your mind concerning where we stand in this war. In the meantime, do go and have some tea with your family. Your mother will be happy to see you," Mr Peverell continued cheerfully.

"All right," Charlie agreed wondering what they could show him to make him change his mind.

As evening approached Charlie was more and more curious to see the Peverells again and to leave well behind the sound of the latest hit of Celestina Warback, _My Accursed Love_, that his mother put on to show her happiness about seeing her second oldest son again. His father was not at home, so he could not discuss with him the strange appearance of Mr Ignotus Peverell. At least the family clock did not show that Arthur Weasley would be in mortal danger, it merely stated that he was at work.

Val was waiting for Charlie in front of the shop when he returned.

Except that there was no shop but instead an abandoned Muggle construction site. He noticed that the street was full of Muggles, both young and old, some of them smoking in front of the door, a strange habit for Charlie and an even stranger feat for so late in the evening right above the Ministry of Magic. They didn't seem to notice either Val or himself. He wore Muggle clothing as was his custom in Romania but Val was in the same plain black witch robes she had worn earlier in the afternoon.

Charlie wondered if the Muggles were under the influence of some collective hallucination. Than he realized it was Friday and Dad told him that Muggles usually went out on Friday night but why would they go out in front of the wizarding pharmacy disguised as a construction site in their world was beyond his understanding. He remembered some of his Muggle acquaintances in Romania who would go out to have a glass of wine on a bench in the park on summer evenings but he still couldn't explain away such a large quantity of night visitors.

Val smiled at him and took his hand. "Let me show you what they see," she said.

He reluctantly gave in and in a blink of an eye he was in front of the newly refurbished pub with loud music coming through the doors. The sign above the door didn't read Peverell and Son any more. It red Lyra's in bright red letters. Charlie entered with Val and was amazed at how busy the place was. The chairs and tables were bursting with people. In the middle there was a small stage with 2 instruments, a piano and a trumpet. Val shoved him on one of the empty seats at the bar close to the stage. She gave a sign to the barman who may or may not have looked very similar to the old drunk admiring the establishment, the night when Lyra's had first appeared in the middle of Muggle London.

The barman pushed a bottle and a glass of Muggle whiskey towards Charlie and winked an eye. Charlie poured himself a glass, took a sip and continued to admire his surroundings. He has never heard of a Muggle bar run by wizards and he was sure that Dad would have loved the place. One or another detail would reveal a presence of magic to witch or wizard, such as coat hangers shaped as Centaurs or the fact that the glasses were washing themselves in a closet disguised to look like a Muggle dishwasher. Yet all in all, the interior was simple and full of life.

Charlie braced himself for what was to come and nearly toppled over his chair when Mr Peverell himself climbed the stage, dressed in a pair of worn jeans, dark shirt and no tie. His grey hair that looked thin and greasy on his head in the afternoon was now curly, bushy and carelessly dishevelled. Val joined him, wearing all of a sudden very tight black jeans and a white T-shirt with a star pattern discreetly printed on the back side in shades of silvery grey. Her hair was still in a tight bun but her face had a strange angular beauty in her new attire and the abstract shaped hair pin she wore was no longer black but electric green. Green and silver fitted her perfectly.

Then Val sat at the piano, Mr Peverell lifted his trumpet and they played. Merlin, they played! Charlie has never heard such blood revolving music in his life. The piano set the pace and the trumpet improvised the tune high above it, making the crowd go crazy from cheering. That was how Charlie heard, for the first time in his life, the music Muggles called jazz.

Despite his ignorance, Charlie was sure that it was Muggle music. And no true Dark Lord supporter would play Muggle music in a Muggle bar under any circumstances. It would simply be too disrespectful towards their Master.

Charlie sank in his chair and continued to enjoy the music and drink his whiskey when a dark haired woman, vaguely similar to Val, but somewhat older and much more beautiful, with her hair loose in crazy tangles all over her back sat gingerly into a chair next to him. She seemed disorientated and sick, shaking, leaning onto the counter, trying to distinguish where she was with heavy lidded eyes. When the barman tossed her a bottle of Muggle whiskey and a glass she didn't react at all.

Charlie was intrigued and decided to be a gentleman, even if a lady was quite a bit older than he. Not old enough to be his mother but she could very well have been his aunt, had any of his parents had a younger sister that was not red of hair.

"Let me," he said as he poured her a drink.

The woman was bewildered, she looked at him with crazed pale blue eyes and straightened her spine in an arrogant fashion as if pain she was obviously in did not matter at all.

"This should better be worth my time," she commented swallowing the contents of the glass in one go. "Interesting potion and most interesting vial I must say. Are you brewing it?"

"Er, no," muttered Charlie. "I'm also having some."

"It serves you right. I surely deserve some. I hope that your punishment was severe enough for the failure you committed."

"I'm sure it was," Charlie accepted the game swallowing the contents of his glass in turn, not sure at all what they were talking about. He used the conversation to take a good look at his new bar neighbour. She wore a long black dress with tight long sleeves widening loose from her elbows towards her pale hands covered with silvery scars. Her shoulders were left partially bare by the oval opening on her back. The white of her skin was in stark contrast with her dark hair and several bruises were visible around her neck. She appeared extremely obnoxious and unfriendly.

"Hey, love," one of the guests on a table near by yelled towards her. "Come and have a drink with me, I am much more exciting than that boy."

Bellatrix Lestrange rose from her bar chair and strolled to the impertinent guest towering above him as a sphinx.

"I was told that this establishment guarantees some privacy", she said calmly, punching the man straight into his face with superhuman force.

Charlie Weasley was stunned. This woman, whoever she was, had a heart of a dragon. And Charlie has always been fond of dragons as deadly as they were.

Bellatrix slowly returned to the bar as the man she hit came to his senses and started fiddling with his glass, pointedly not looking in her direction any more. She sat back on her bar chair with aristocratic poise and for the first time truly noticed the boy, green boy, unknown red-haired boy trying to look like a man, in his early twenties, observing her with a look of utter approval. He was a bit shorter than her, square and well-muscled. His lower arms were full of old scars, but she couldn't distinguish his Dark Mark among them.

That night it was the very first time Bellatrix used the newly established and highly recommended centre providing discreet health care to the Death Eaters in distress under the nose of the Ministry of Magic. Draco's latest failure to introduce Death Eaters to Hogwarts through a set of matching vanishing cabinets has earned her a strong punishment from the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord gave Draco two more days to succeed. There was no room for another failure. It would mean a new punishment for her and a certain death for Draco. She didn't care about the life of her nephew very much but she would help him repair the damned cabinet because she probably couldn't bear to see her sister Narcissa cry if something would happen to her precious little offspring.

And Master, sweet Master would then turn to Severus Snape to eliminate Albus Dumbledore.

If she could only find proof in that time that Snape was not only a dirty half-blood but also a dirty traitor, Dumbledore's spy, and present it to her Master to prove she was his most loyal servant. Then _she_ could kill Dumbledore and please the Master.

Her master. Her-… She didn't dare to admit it, not even to herself, not even in her dreams, but she came to believe that the kind of bodily attention she was sometimes called to provide for the Dark Lord might mean something to him as well, whatever it was.

To Bellatrix, the Dark Lord's company meant everything. She had given him her soul long time ago.

Her very being was ablaze every time he graced her with his presence and being tortured by him was a source of strange pleasure. She knew that the amounts of Cruciatus curse she had been exposed to lately would draw any other witch into insanity but she cherished it as a sign of her Master's special affection. She remained lucid enough to understand that even among the Death Eaters some would argue that feeling how she felt was a sign of even bigger insanity. Many commented on the side when they thought she was not listening that madness ran deep in the Black family. The image of her brother-in-law Lucius Malfoy came into mind but she consciously discarded those thoughts. Her faith into their Master will be proven and rewarded one day.

She swallowed another glass of the potion the boy poured for her, helpfully. It reminded her of the Firewhisky her father used to get from private storage of Orion Black, Sirius's father. Her older sister Andromeda and she used to steal it as girls. She cursed herself for unwanted childhood memories that flooded her every time after a good Cruciatus session since she was released from Azkaban. And in the past year she also constantly remembered how her cousin Sirius had died laughing. Mocking her… "Nooo!" she yelled to stop that chain of thoughts as it was particularly self-destructive.

Maybe Sirius had been the lucky one.

She should have let him live and watch the rise to power of the Dark Lord, all until the death of the Potter boy.

"Er…" coughed the boy, stirred by her cry, "great potion, right?"

In a blur of strange sounds she looked at the boy once more. Music that was not there in the dark hospital surroundings was pounding in her head. She couldn't pinpoint the direction it was coming from. She has never heard anything like that. It was almost always quiet in her childhood home and the Dark Lord revelled in silence, the hissing of his snake, or in screams of those who deserved punishment. There was no need for any other sound. Fenrir Greyback told her that the methods in this healing institution were unorthodox but that the Dark Lord approved of it. As a decent pure blood witch could not take the word of that half-breed into account she allowed the Dark Lord to read her mind and her intention of seeking it for the first time. She interpreted his lack of further punishment as an agreement. The Dark Lord had left her as a puddle on the floor and she was still not sure how she Apparated to this clinic alive.

Music, she thought. She remembered aunt Walburga cursing cousin Sirius for listening to something she called "_Muggle rock music_" in the Black family house. She had never seen her that angry. Her rage had something personal about it as if her aunt discovered that the music hurt her non-existing feelings. Their house-elf Kreacher had to cast a permanent silencing charm around Sirius's room to preserve Walburga's fragile nerves as wizarding magic did not work against Sirius's own charms to keep the volume constantly up high.

Bellatrix desired to be like her aunt, devoid of feelings, calm and dignified, at the time when any neutral observer could have told her that she had already lost herself to her fiancée Rodolphus and would have killed herself or anyone else if he had asked her too. Be as it may, there were no fairy godmothers looking after any of the Black children so they grew up as they could. The choices Bellatrix made were particularly deplorable, she turned manic and cold and she took way too much pleasure in inflicting pain.

"Er…" the boy dared going further, "excuse me for saying so, Madam, but sometimes a bit of movement helps the effect of this potion. Maybe I could show you?"

The boy stood, went into the middle of the room and started swaying from one leg to another. She noticed some other patients doing the same thing.

"Why not," she said, helping herself to another glass of the potion that the boy had thoughtfully poured for her before leaving the hospital bed next to her. She stood on her feet and glided to the centre of the room, feeling every muscle ache yet starting to feel light and relieved. She closed her eyes, inhaled the non-existent music and made one careful step forward. Her robes felt different, as if they were transformed into something silky and perfumed, black and shiny as she would have wanted her dress robes to be long time ago in the days of her youth. Bellatrix let her arms fall next to her body and finally relaxed.

She took another step forward and did something she hasn't done since attending balls with her family more than 20 years ago. She took the hand the boy didn't know he was offering and lifted their joined hands up high above her head. And then, gracefully, gently, softly, Bellatrix Lestrange twirled.

Charlie Weasley opened his mouth and gazed at her timidly, pondering that he might get hit in his face for it. The black dress was perfect, embracing her and sending sparks when she moved as if starlight descended in the corners of the dark silk. Charlie was prudent enough not to speak. When she finished her turn, she put her hand on his shoulder and they jointly made a few uncertain steps on the dance floor.

"A good therapy, indeed!" exclaimed Bellatrix as the ears of the strong young man next to her turned an impossible shade of red.

Suddenly the music changed to tape. Mr Peverell and his daughter grabbed Charlie from behind, dragging him away from the dance floor and from the unknown dark woman, who remained alone, looking old and crushed by merciless passage of time, her magic suddenly put out like a candle on the graveyard, left to burn for the dead in too strong wind.

Charlie didn't see that change and when he was well behind the stage, Mr Peverell whispered in a frightened voice:

"I see that you have met Bellatrix Lestrange."

Charlie gasped in shock as a little girl and looked back only to see Lestrange clutch the Dark Mark on her left forearm and disappear from the dance podium, flying as black malevolent smoke through one of the open pub windows. The crowd cheered as if they have been witnessing an innocuous stage effect of colourful vapour.

Weasley knew enough about Death Eaters to understand that she was being summoned: they were definitely up to something. He immediately cast a Patronus and relayed a message to his Dad omitting where he was and why. He was disgusted with himself. He felt as sober as if he hadn't just ingested almost an entire bottle of Muggle whiskey and danced with a Death Eater. And not just anyone, it was the insane Bellatrix Lestrange, the cruellest of all, special friend of You-Know-Who, his right and left arm for messy killings and torture.

Charlie shivered.

Mum would kill me if she knew, he thought. Best if she doesn't find out.

Mr Peverell and his daughter conjured another glass of whiskey for him. Now it was real Firewhisky, not the Muggle imitation, and as soon as he drank it the bar suddenly turned in an empty herbal shop, tidied up for the night closing hours. There was nothing particular about it.

"We can explain," Val said.

"Honestly, I don't think I want to know. I will give you that your hospital for the Death Eaters is a bit different than I imagined. How did you make her not know where she was?" asked Charlie.

"Sometimes we only see what we believe in", said Ignotus Peverell seriously, as a completely different personality, all giddiness, petty talk and annoying behaviour Charlie saw him exhibit earlier that day totally gone from his demeanour. Only his messy hair still revealed the true makings of a passionate musician. "She was in any case partially aware of her surroundings. She could see you and hear the music to some extent. She obviously saw herself seated in more conventional wizarding facilities having a proper potion and being surrounded by other patients…"

"You mean colleague Death Eaters?" Charlie had to ask.

"You could say so. What is most worrying is that none of the other Death Eaters until now has ever been able to glimpse a view of the reality we have showed you tonight to make you see for yourself our true intentions," added Peverell thoughtfully.

"Dad, there was one other who saw something was wrong," Val interfered.

"Indeed. But he is no Death Eater," Ignotus replied to his daughter, ignoring Charlie for a second.

"Dad, how do you know? It's been almost two weeks since he promised to come and see me. He never showed up and the anniversary is tomorrow night..."

"He's no more a Death Eater than I am!" bellowed Peverell, piercing Charlie with a sharp look from his at once completely colourless pair of eyes, as if they were woven of drops of water or puffs of thin air. "Son, are you more convinced about helping us with the dragon now?"

"Definitely. No true dark side supporter would play like the two of you did. However, I would like to know how this charm of yours works?"

"That, my boy, is a complicated matter best left for some other time. You would not describe to me the wards that protect your family house in these dark times now, would you? We have just met."

"Of course not, Mr Peverell, I understand what you mean. But I'm still curious," said Charlie with a small smile.

Ignotus Peverell did not react at all and Val busied herself tidying up the shop further.

"I can go and see the dragon now if you wish. I'm returning to Romania tomorrow and I could take it there and place it in the dragon reserve until you need it again for transport. If that's all right with you," he concluded, giving up the questioning for the time being.

"Brilliant!" said Val kissing his cheek and looking much younger and relaxed. "Keeping the Disillusionment Charm on Betty would not be sustainable for much longer. Please treat her kindly."

At that Ignotus Peverell finally decided to speak: "There is one other thing you should know, son. While I cannot explain you all the spells protecting my home, since you agreed to help us, I will reveal you one of my secrets. As long as the dragon is with you and you remain true to your word to us to keep her safe, you can come back to this place and seek help for yourself. On the top shelf behind the counter there are jars with dragon fire, dangerous artefacts as you may know. Touch them all with your wand. Only one jar will glow blue from your touch.

If you open it and if you are in need to travel, the dragon will come to you from Romania, she would come to you from Brasil if necessary, and she will take you wherever you have to go.

If you are in a dire need of any other kind and cannot find the way, turn the lid two times counter-clockwise, and blow over it as if you want to put out the fire. The fire will then show you the vision of what you should do. Trust it. It has never failed me before."

"And if I don't keep to our agreement?"

"You work with dragons, son. If you betray us, the fire will consume you, wherever you are," Peverell's voice rang hollow and meek in the empty shop.

Yet there was no mistake about the warning it contained. Charlie felt his heart sink in his throat and managed to say casually: "Very well. Let's meet Betty."


	7. Chapter 7

I don't own Harry Potter.

This was difficult to write. Am wondering what you think about it, if anything at all.

**Chapter 7 Colour of Rust**

Sirius was running free in his Animagus form across the low grass of the desolate moors towards the sea, dragging a bag of food with his paws as best he could. His body became strong again and he couldn't stop admiring the small Muggle village he visited more often than not to find what they needed. People were so strangely dressed, men in old fashioned suits and women in long dresses almost covering their feet so that they could barely walk in Sirius's opinion. Even children ran barefoot and dirty in worn suits and dresses. There was not a single pair of jeans or a T-shirt to be seen, there were no shops, no pubs, and all population would go to a small building with the cross on the top once a week in the morning, leaving him lots of time to steal food. A few wizards and witches he had seen all wore pointed hats, and for the first time in his life Sirius found himself also wearing one if he had to walk unnoticed in the village on two legs instead of four. He liked the historic looks of the place and didn't dwell too much on the reasons for his personal paradise to contain it in the first place. When he told Ariana about it, she only shrugged and said she had never gone out of the small house, so she had no idea what was out there in their surroundings.

The days were getting longer and the sun would bathe the small rocky beach beneath their house with some warmth. He soon realized that the village inhabitants never approached the seaside for pleasure, as if it had been cursed, there were a few fishermen making a trade out of it and that was all. A huge shaggy black dog would run to the sea for a good swim enjoying how the waves almost crushed him and how the chill of the water made him alert and giddy with excitement.

He thought less and less of his life in almost six months he had spent with Ariana. At first, remembering was too painful. His regrets would creep in and make him sick. He felt so inadequate wishing he could have saved James and Lily or helped Harry more. But there was an intruder in his thoughts whose golden-orange locks of hair slowly infiltrated all corners of his mind, while he stubbornly remained as he always was; rash and blind to the truth.

Sirius was so happy with his new companionship, loyal to the point that he couldn't grasp the imperceptible slow change in it, just like, long ago, he couldn't have imagined that Peter Pettigrew, one of his four best friends, one of his _brothers_, would betray them all to Voldemort and ruin their lives.

Had Sirius lived less intensively and thought a tiny bit more, he would have seen it coming. He arranged and rearranged the small house he shared with Ariana. He brought her something new from the outside every day to see how she smiled and told her in great detail about his wanderings, describing every little plant and living creature he had encountered. Ariana would answer by discussing books she was reading and before they knew it he was giving her lessons in the contemporary Defence against the Dark Arts. He offered her his wand to practice but she refused, afraid of what her magic could do. Instead she repeated the incantations and practised movements with one of the griffin shaped antique lanterns as if it was a wand. He had a good laugh noticing her growing fascination with the Impedimenta jinx and with Petrificus Totalis when she practised it on the candelabrum with seven dragon heads, reaping big success.

She taught him a spell Corpuspiritusand its counterpart Spirituscorpusshe had read about in one of her father's own works entitled _Invisibility: Charms, Cloaks and More_. He had never heard about that spell which in theory transfigured a person into a ghost for a limited amount of time, depending on the caster's magical strength, and could come handy in a duel as curses normally had a tendency to pass through ghosts. Bella would have wasted her killing curse on me, he thought, amused to no end.

Yet Corpuspiritus was nothing but an elaborate illusion – you could charm yourself to appear as a ghost but not into actually being one for any period of time. His own knowledge was very clear on that. He was very careful not to show his misgivings to Ariana, who was for her part thrilled to know something he didn't in the defence area.

They shared the bed every night as if they were siblings and thinking of her in any other way felt like a blasphemy. Sirius was sometimes afraid he was only dreaming and was half expecting to wake up in his real well deserved afterlife of eternal remorse with only Severus Snape for company. He gave secret thanks to whoever was in charge of the universe every morning when this didn't happen. His path back to some sort of spiritual well-being after Azkaban had been arduous and he intended to keep his spirit up at all costs.

Still in the darkest of the night sometimes he would wake up and dream with his eyes wide open. He would watch her sleep and wish he had met her in the street long time ago and asked her out like a man. Muggle cinema came to mind; the film they would see together would have to be old fashioned and slow going. A history, of sorts. She would like that, he was certain.

On occasions he dreamt of showing her his parents' house to help him decorate it together in Gryffindor red and gold. No, he thought, I would have to leave at least some of the Slytherin greens. Green would fit her, just like it fit Lily, but not because of her eyes, not at all, she would be stunning in green because of the sunlight captured in her hair.

Still wet and shaking to get rid of the excessive water, Sirius finally returned home in his dog form. There was a dark shadow surrounding the small house and the door was locked and freshly warded. Sirius could not come in. He dropped the bag of food at the door and stood up on hind legs to peer in through the window. His mouth dropped open taking in the scene in front of his eyes.

A skinny unknown young man in brown Muggle clothing was having a conversation with Ariana. He could have been just a little bit older than Sirius who didn't know what to think. His own solitary personal heaven suddenly became way too inhabited. Apparently more souls went to one place. Maybe there wasn't enough room for everybody who was dying, he thought, remembering the destruction that Voldemort and his followers have been unleashing in the real world.

There was something uncanny about the man despite his ordinary appearance. He irradiated shades of dark purple haze from his person towards Ariana. Sirius thought it must have been some very dark non-verbal spell and Ariana seemed completely unaware of it. The dog was drenched in cold sweat as he gripped the window sill with toe and nail of two giant black paws to have a better view.

"Darling, have you considered my proposition?" Gellert asked, smiling.

Ariana didn't move. Nameless fear gnawed inside her, apprehension from this man who would use her, who had used her, not as bad as those Muggle boys did, but still. She wanted to summon her anger but her magic never worked with him. She never knew if he somehow disabled her or if he simply frightened her that much that she was paralysed. What did he want with her? He didn't look bad, some other normal witch would have been thrilled to marry him. Why did he come after her?

And why, why in good heavens did he have to feed her brother Albus lies about her condition, lies about how dangerous and aggressive she was when he perfectly knew that he could keep her harmless as a proper Squib with his dangerous demeanour and dark spells.

Gellert stretched out his arm and caressed her, the smallest touch of his thumb on her right cheek. Ariana went livid, stiff and shrivelled like a flower on a too hot summer day without any breeze to cool it down.

"Love, one word from you and I will tell them all how much you improved. You will leave this place as my fiancée and you might even get a wand in the future," he continued.

She observed him in mute terror and did not speak.

Gellert drew out his wand: "Why are you so tremulous? I was hoping for a warmer welcome. After all, no one can blame me for what happened. I didn't do anything new to you. Those Muggles took care of everything already. "

He approached even closer, pressing himself against her, and whispered: "Shall I take your silence as a yes?"

"No," she muttered in response, immediately staggering in horror.

"I didn't hear you very well," he leaned his forehead on hers, still smiling and drawing circles with his wand on her stomach.

"No, please," Ariana gasped collapsing on her knees as the cloud of purple haze emanating from the man swallowed her completely.

Grindelwald took a good look at the woman beneath him.

"I am surprised to see you looking so… good… after being alone for what… almost 6 months? How sad that you refused my proposal the last time! I may have gotten angry and owled your younger brother a vial of dragon pox as an anonymous birthday gift – I hear he survived but he is in a rather bad shape…"

Gellert proceeded to examine the room stooping to pick up two long black hairs from the frame of the Muggle painting of a birth of a baby boy, cold fury finding a way to his eyes.

"You look positively radiant, my dear. Has somebody else been visiting?" he drooled, deviously. He started pacing in circles around Ariana, observing her attentively from all sides as if she was another obsolete magical artefact and not a human being.

"I wouldn't put it past your uncontrolled crazy magic to somehow let someone slip in. But I'm sure that you'll never get out of here or blow yourself up without my help. I invested all my magical knowledge to ward this place against your freakish outbursts!" the man raged walking faster and faster, as Ariana refused to speak again and was now staring at the floor.

"Who would say you had it in you? Did you let him come close to you?! Did you allow him to touch you? And did you enjoy it? Albus would've had you locked in St Mungos forever if I didn't advise him against it!"

The enormous black dog was frantically scratching at the window to no avail and Grindelwald was too angry to notice it.

Gellert's face darkened as he advanced towards Ariana, wand raised in an evil menace, towering over her with the intention to harm her, Sirius was certain. Without thinking, he took his distance from the window, ran as fast as he could and leaped through the glass shattering it in ten thousand pieces, not sure if he did it with wandless magic, with pure undiluted rage or using both at the same time.

In seconds he was upon Gellert and his teeth immediately got hold of the other wizard's wand. Padfoot's jaws closed upon it and then he spat the pitiful stick on the ground as if it was nothing but dead wood. He jumped on Gellert and started tearing at his throat until a crack of Disapparition left him alone, seething over the stone floor, chewing on a piece of shapeless brown fabric tasting like poison. He spat that out as well, as far as he could. It was a considerably bigger effort than usual to transform back to his human form. The animal in him wanted to taste blood and he could not, would not calm down. For the first time he had a hint of how his friend Remus the werewolf must have felt when the wolf took control.

When he finally came to his senses and regained the humanity of his body after several unsuccessful trials, he realised that Ariana was unconscious despite that her eyes were wide open and focused on something in great distance. Using a simple cleaning spell, he vanished the excessive glass from the room, patched the larger cuts on his arms and face and removed the shards of glass from his body, afraid to touch her before he was satisfied he was not going to hurt her with any residues of the window on his person.

Then he sat down and gently pulled her head in his lap spreading her hair on his robes as she did for him on that first day, brushing the tender strands with his fingers, soft and charged with concern. Ariana seemed to be suffering the after effect of some curse unknown to Sirius. It must have been the purple shade she was invaded with. And a curse Sirius did not know must have been very dark indeed because he experienced the vast repertoire of semi-legal and illegal dark curses on his skin when he was being educated as a child in the Black family.

He decided to lay her on the makeshift bed and cover her. She was breathing and seemed stable at the moment. Then he changed back into the animal form to ventilate his emotions. He always did it that way since Azkaban. As far as possible from Ariana's elongated unmoving feet protruding between the blankets, the big black dog shivered for countless hours, crumpled on the floor in front of the painting, unable to let his dread and anger go away.

Nothing helped.

When he was on the verge of a complete shut-down, unable to rein in his feelings, incapable to bring them to a stop, he felt a pet on his head and realised that Ariana was awake and seated next to him on the stone floor. The slabs were pale yellow, almost vanilla in colour, with the faintest trace of pink veins drawing intricate patterns in the immutable stone.

Not knowing if he was a man, or a dog, or both, he clutched at her and started shaking, uncontrollably. He felt being held back but this time she was not gentle and sister-like as she would normally be. She was frenzied, squeezing him back urgently as if she wanted to make certain it was him and not anyone else, or maybe that was only what he wanted to believe. He completely lost it when her fingers got entangled in his hair: she held him so hard that it caused him pain.

He buried himself in her robes pulling at the strings and buttons, wanting to see her as he had never seen her before. She responded in kind turning his robes in badly damaged shreds with her wicked use of accidental magic, but he barely noticed the violence he was subjected to, more skilled as he was in getting the access he needed with less damage to her garments. His hands visited her body in detail, vaguely aware that hers tried to do the same for him, much more aware that her body did react to his touch in ways he could only have dreamed. Yet he couldn't bring himself to raise his face to hers for the fear of what he would see.

She pushed him away gently to a safe seated distance and he found that he could not stand her rejection. So in the end he just stared at her once more, stupefied, in awe of her form exposed freely in front of him, more beautiful than any woman he could have ever imagined.

He tried to say something but Ariana put her hand on his mouth and smiled at him, with emotion he could not recognise, her eyes a source of the most brilliant blue. It was the most wonderful sight he had ever seen.

Sirius didn't kiss her then because he just couldn't stop looking directly in her eyes, seeking the reassurance that it was alright. That it could be done. That he could be her man. None came but her gaze didn't waver.

He threw all caution to the wind and pulled her on top of him, noticing a puzzled glimmer in her eyes, not knowing what it meant, not caring at that point. They became lovers then and there, on the cold stone floor, drowning in one another. It was unmeasured, uncomfortable and unforgiving, but it felt as natural as breathing, as logical as drinking water after crossing a desert.

It felt incredible.

"You are mine," he whispered possessively afterwards, leaving any other conversation he wanted to pursue for some other time. She made some hassle to dress and rearrange her robes, before she let him pull her back into his arms, from where she should never leave, if Sirius had a say about that.

When he finally decided to move a bit from their embrace, curious as to where the new situation would take them, he noticed a small rust coloured stain on the pastel coloured floor, bright and rude, screaming in the daylight.

How could it be? She was of age, it could not be that... Or could it?

Sirius had thousand questions for Ariana but he could not speak a word because now she was pulling him back into her arms, misleading him with determination, straight into a full Body-bind spell. He could not move any more. With loving attention Ariana dressed Sirius up as if he was her doll, reconfirming the new knowledge of his body with her hands as she went, putting to good use the fresh set of black robes he had stolen in the village a week ago. She burned most of the robes she ruined on one of the dragon heads, happy to get some fuel for its fire at last. Methodically, she set aside a few brownish looking threads for later.

Sirius felt being levitated towards their bed and back to the wall like a bag of potatoes. He was ruthlessly positioned under the small table with chimaera-shaped legs they used for dining. Ariana then busied herself building a credible disorder of books and dishes on and around the table as if she was just caught in middle of her reading after dinner.

Only when she was finished and seemingly satisfied that Sirius was completely incapacitated and hidden, she looked at him and said flatly, all emotion absent from her voice: "I'm sorry, Sirius. This is for your own good." That sentence would have left Sirius speechless even if he wasn't already hexed into silence against his will. Ariana turned her eyes away because she could not stand to see, written all over his face, a crazed expression of one abandoned.

Refusing to look at him again, Ariana stood in the middle of the room, flushed, waiting, calm as steel. Her blue eyes started to twinkle dangerously in a way Sirius had never seen them, yet the sensation was familiar. Who did they remind him of? An old friend of a kind… Sirius did not know.

She took the unburned pieces of brown fabric and scattered them strategically in front of the Muggle painting, where another piece of textile that Padfoot spat out still lay.

And it was only at that moment that Ariana finally noticed the rust coloured imprint on the floor where they had been. Her incredulous gaze rapidly checked her light grey robes observing a matching stain there, a silent witness of what they had done.

Her look of genuine shock immediately jumped back to Sirius and she seemed to have lost all her newly found assuredness. Her bottom lip trembled.

There was no time for explanations as the cracks of Apparition were heard one after another and three very different wizards materialised in the room. Ariana immediately ran towards the much younger version of the man Sirius knew sympathized the Order of the Phoenix, a barman in the sinister pub Hog's Head in the Hogsmeade village near Hogwarts, broad-shouldered and brown-haired. She hugged him with all her strength.

"Aberforth!" she cried hiding herself in his arms. "It's been so long!"

"Ariana!" Abeforth hugged his sister and positioned himself between her and the other two newcomers, the man Sirius nearly killed earlier that day and a very tall and thin young man with long auburn hair, wearing bright purple robes decorated with a pattern of lime coloured stars.

"Albus, when were you going to tell me that our sister was alive?" Aberforth burst out.

"Aberforth, I will repeat this as long as necessary, I had no idea. Gellert has just found her after 12 years of search, for Merlin's sake! Be glad that our father's painting took her and that she didn't die in a fit of her spontaneous magic as I let everyone believe. Our father _was_ a Dark Wizard. I should have never honoured his last wish and left that painting with her," said Albus Dumbledore in a flat voice of reason, coloured with the faintest trace of guilt, as a dumbstruck Sirius realised the identity of his former teacher and friend, gaping wordlessly for air in frantic heroic fight against the invisible bonds keeping him in mute hiding.

Sirius struggled and he yelled but no matter what he did, he could still not move and no one could hear him. Useless as usual, he thought bitterly.

"Albus, 12 years ago you told me she died! We held a funeral for her! I broke your nose because I blamed you for her death! HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN? How frequently have YOU visited her? Or did you leave her in HIS care while you went on your travels, your search for _hallows, _is that how you call them?" Aberforth was clearly out of his mind.

"I didn't know, Aberforth. All I had was assumptions! Look at the painting behind you. We've always suspected it had dark properties," said Dumbledore calmly in a tone he used so often when advising Sirius to stay put in his horrible old house for Harry's sake.

Aberforth would not relent: "When was the last time you visited her before _today_ when this scum came knocking at your door? For once I am glad I chose the same time to pay you a visit!"

The scum used the time since he returned wisely, to surreptitiously retrieve his wand from the floor where it had been launched from Padfoot's jaws, and pretended to draw it from the back pocket of his Muggle trousers, the same pair he was wearing earlier. No time to change, thought Sirius sarcastically. Ariana stood unmoving as a statue, hidden behind Aberforth, when the purple wave from her would be attacker approached her again, this time, Sirius noticed, only to be halted in front of Aberforth by a luminous pale orange air bubble, probably a shielding charm Aberforth conjured wordlessly.

As if his presence grew with the wand he was wielding again, Gellert walked slowly towards Aberforth and Ariana who backed off together towards the Muggle painting of a birth of a baby boy on the opposite wall, that Albus seemed to blame for bringing Ariana to the small house to start with.

"I would choose your words wiser if I were you, goat lover!" Grindewald hissed. "Albus and I wasted 12 years searching for your sister and I came to him as soon as I found her! And it was not easy with her disability! Now we need to commit her to an institution. The Nurmgard Institute for Terminal Cases of Spell Damage under my direction is probably the most suitable place."

"Gellert," said Ariana, calm and cold as ice, still well hidden by Aberforth's strong body and thick rough-spun brown robes. The young girl cowed by Gellert's presence and writhing on the floor under his malignant spell was gone. Both her brothers observed the change in her demeanour intently.

How could I've ever missed it? thought Sirius proudly. She's a Dumbledore through and through. The only wizard Voldemort has ever been afraid of…

Another realisation struck him… How big a moron could he possibly be? That bloke who attacked Ariana must have been buggering Gellert GRINDELWALD! Sirius wholeheartedly regretted not being awake more frequently in the ghost Professor Binns' History of Magic class as then he would have surely remembered Grindelwald's first name was Gellert much faster.

"Thank you for your care, Gellert", Ariana continued softly, almost leaning at the Muggle painting which was now right behind her and to Sirius's vivid imagination it started looking sentient, as if the dark skies above the peaceful Nativity scene woke up to an eerie life of their own.

There were strange whispers all over the small stone house above the sea but only Sirius and Ariana could hear them.

"Stop lying to me, Albus! You absolute coward! Merlin knows what this scum did to her in all that time!" Aberforth yelled, pulled out his wand and plunged forward as if he wanted to stab his brother rather than hex him.

Grindelwald moved to defend Albus, who was forced to cast a strong shield charm which rebounded and brought all three wizards down to the ground.

Ariana was now in plain view, face clearly visible and framed by the painted dark blue sky. Both Albus and Aberforth stood up and stared at their sister as if they had now seen her for the first time in their lives.

Sirius observed Gellert, thinking that the aspirant Dark Lord looked as if he would have gladly turned into a rat and run to hide in the nearest sewer, just like a certain traitor Sirius used to be friends with would have done.

"Albus, your sin is beyond measure –" whispered Aberforth, horrified.

"Gellert, what have you done?" Albus interrupted his brother, danger building in his voice.

"I –" started Gellert, cowering backwards.

"You know, Gellert, I could have loved you if you had only asked me politely," Ariana administered a final blow to her kidnapper and gaoler in a monotonous voice while exposing better to everyone's view the bloody stain in the disarray of her robes, her bare white neck and slender forearms, marked with fresh and unmistakable traces of forceful intimacy.

Grindelwald's face turned from scarlet to green as he tried to release another wave of purple haze towards Ariana presumably to stop her from talking. The torn pieces of brown fabric at Ariana's feet perfectly matched the colour of his blouse near his neck, where a piece of textile had been ripped apart with canine teeth.

"Instead of cursing me to suppress my freakish outbursts as you call them, you could've done something for me. And it could have been very simple. I _love_ when someone makes breakfast for me, did you know that, Gellert?" Ariana hammered her point without mercy, shielded by orange glow, before she looked away, smiling, her gaze wandering aimlessly for a second as if she was mentally deranged from the perspective of an outside viewer.

Sirius understood that her last sentence and her vulnerable smile were a declaration meant for him under the table. For the first time that day, tears started running freely down his face threatening to choke him, if his many times wounded heart did not stop beating first.

He was not the only one suffering a nervous breakdown as at that moment Gellert sank to his knees and looked as if he was about to beg Ariana for forgiveness.

Aberforth launched himself at Gellert hitting him with his fists. All emotion instantly gone from the future Dark Lord, Grindelwald retaliated with a nasty Expulso spell sending Aberforth to the wall. Albus joined the fight and spells started flying all over the room in jets of flames of red and blue. The forces were equal and there was no winning or losing side in a duel of three wizards. In the heat of a moment there was a green flame directed to Aberforth, sent by Grindewald or perhaps by his own brother, Sirius could not tell.

Aberforth ducked reflexively, Albus Apparated forward to try and push Ariana out of harm's way but it was too late. The smallest touch of green light hit her squarely in the neck as she stumbled into the dark blue painted sky, now rippling furiously as in storm, swallowing her lean form and the painted figures until only the dark wavy surface remained, a tattered black cloth hanging on a pointed arch.

Sirius screamed in soundless terror.

Albus' eyes shined with fury when he failed to reach Ariana. With the speed of light Sirius had never seen in the old man he knew, long auburn hair following his motion, he turned his wand on Grindelwald with all the intent required to perform any and all of the Unforgivable curses, only to hear a loud crack of his opponent Disapparating.

"What have I done?" Albus asked himself, devastated, in face of the Veil of Death.

"_You_ killed our sister for good this time, Albus!" Aberforth concluded, spat on his brother and blasted a hole in the walls of the small house. He then left walking like a simple Muggle would, without another word.

The smell of the sea permeated the little stone house fully on the inside for the first time in 12 years. The scent spoke of wholeness and of hope, but hope could not reach Albus Dumbledore, or Sirius Black, submerged in their grief.

Albus slowly gathered his wits and carefully levitated the Veil of Death, noticing a pair of long black hairs on the arch just like Gellert did. Dumbledore immediately produced a phoenix shaped Patronus and gave it instructions: "Stay here. If someone returns, tell them that I have decided to donate this obviously perilous dark artefact to the Ministry of Magic to prevent further tragedies."

Then he spoke dangerously to no one in particular but the words he said sounded like the coming of doom: "Gellert, my friend, one day I will challenge you. And I will win. For the greater good."

Dumbledore walked out of the small stone house, the Veil of Death gliding ominously before him like a surface of a lake at night hung upside down. The smell of the sea and sweet herbs continued to fill the air as if someone, somewhere, considered that not all was lost.

It took more than 12 hours for the Body-bind spell Ariana put on Sirius to wear off.

Despite Grindewald's dubious methods of controlling her magic, Ariana was in many aspects almost a Squib and certainly not a trained witch. During that time Sirius tortured himself with regrets. He had to move. He had to know for sure. He cursed his stupid arrogant self for not using his brains before to notice all the hints that were there about the reality of his situation. He could have saved Ariana if he only stopped for a moment to think instead of living his life on an impulse. She must have been so afraid of me in the beginning, he realised, and Snivellus was so right: I am truly an idiot after all.

As soon as the spell finally wore off, he whispered to the Phoenix shaped Patronus still lingering in the room: "Go back to Albus Dumbledore and tell him: If you ever see your sister again, tell her that the man who used to make her breakfast loves her. And that he has gone to do whatever it takes to find her again."

The Phoenix diluted graciously in the thin air. Sirius was not sure why he spoke to it. As far as he knew, the Patronuses couldn't carry a message back to their owner and Sirius was not about to cast his own dog shaped one or to reveal his identity to anyone in that strange new world before he found some solid answers.

Feeling pathetic, Sirius transformed into a dog and ran off to the nearby village, not looking for food but instead for information. There was no newspaper to be seen in that village so he ran farther. He ran for a week before he reached a small town and snitched the newspaper from a clumsy street vendor. Sirius hid himself and studied the front page which confirmed his worst assumptions. He was in 1924. He didn't die. Bellatrix' killing spell sent him to the Veil and embarked him on a voyage through time. He never thought that possible, not to that extent. And in the meanders of time he had met the sister of his friend, leader and former teacher of all wizards, became _involved_ with her and caused her death.

His mind racing forward he finally jumped to the only logical conclusion. If the Veil did this to him, it must have done the same thing for her. There was no other way. He refused to believe in her death as stubbornly as he wanted to believe in his own until Grindelwald crushed down his little private paradise.

The Veil was obviously a dark object. At that moment Sirius knew what had to be done. He was alive and he had a purpose again. There was only one place where he could go and look for answers, only one treasury of knowledge about all things dark that he knew about and which certainly existed in 1924.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.


	8. Chapter 8 The Call of Blood

I own nothing.

Anyone reading?

**Chapter 8 The Call of Blood**

Charlie and Betty were well on their way to Romania when another Death Eater party crushed into Val's perfectly regularly looking hospital the evening after. Bellatrix was leading them and with her, as he promised, finally came Severus Snape. There was a young blond student shivering in a corner. There were a dozen others, all dishevelled, yet happy beyond measure.

Bellatrix waved her wand with new authority at Val: "We require shelter for a few hours. Bring also that healing potion of yours. Now!"

Val hurried to do as she was commanded while the Death Eaters continued pacing and cheering in the back of her shop, which continued to look like a proper small hospital with beds, vials of potions and wizarding healing devices.

Bellatrix destroyed one wall of miscellaneous equipment blasting it and setting it on fire with a careless Reductor curse, giggling all the time like an excited schoolgirl: "Party time, boys and girls! And little baby boys!" She gave an ugly wink to the frightened blond boy. "I would've never believed that Snape here had it in him to kill great Albus Dumbledore!"

Severus Snape produced a self-satisfied smirk and said: "My only endeavour is to serve the Dark Lord."

Pulling his ugliest grin and doing his best to look more evil then usual, Severus looked around and confirmed that dearest Bellatrix had them all Apparate precisely where he suggested and immediately made a terrible mess out of Val's shop. He hoped it would not come to torture and killing as was Bellatrix's wont when her emotions went high, no matter if she was rejoicing or just enraged.

As usual when in proximity of Val Severus instantly succumbed to an uncanny feeling that something was wrong and simply out of place. This time it was not Val, it was her father who was shaking in fear in one of the dark corners while one of the Death Eaters was trying to Imperius him to walk on all fours, in which he eventually succeeded. Yet the fear looked faked… And the man humiliated to act like a beast seemed somehow immaterial as if he was not in the same room with them at all.

Pushing all thoughts on what was all unusual in the surroundings to the back of his mind, as dear Bellatrix was known to suddenly use Legilimency on fellow Death Eaters for fun, Severus searched for Val but he couldn't see her. Bellatrix and the others continued demolishing the premises and young Draco Malfoy sunk even deeper in one of the corners.

Severus stopped worrying about Val for the moment only to get crushed by the realisation he had just killed the only person who knew all the truth about him or as much as he could tell another sentient being. Dumbledore may have not been his father, or his friend, but sometimes he came closer to those terms than anyone else did. Knowing that he had to do it to spare Dumbledore a messy death, as a consequence a dark curse that struck him, didn't make it any easier for Snape. On the contrary, he felt inadequate, misplaced and alone. What kept him going, again, as usual, was his desire for vengeance and murderous thoughts towards Voldemort.

We will all die, he thought, but so will you, Master, if I can help it, so will you.

Snape's mental torture ended when all the Dark Marks started burning and the Death Eaters Disapparated to join their Master in Malfoy Manor. Already in the presence of Voldemort, Snape nearly lost his composure as he discovered a small piece of enchanted wrapping paper with a a star print stuck to the blackness of his robes peeping in conspiracy whisper, in Val's voice, before vanishing through his fingers: "Come back later tonight! Forget about Bella, we can do without."

Many hours later, some time past midnight, a dead tired Severus Snape strolled through a Muggle street full of trees and fell asleep seated on the door sill in front of the herbal shop. Some young Muggles exiting the place almost stepped on him and kicked him with their feet waking him up. One of them murmured "That old drunk again! And I thought him gone".

Severus was too dizzy to notice the abnormality of teenage Muggles being there in the first place when Val finally found him muttering nonsense: "Malfoy, two hours out of Azkaban, and nearly killed by the Dark Lord. Because his 15 years old son could not murder as well as I could. Madness! Death take us all!"

Val pulled him inside and poured a vial of something in his mouth bombing him with fast and nervous words: "This is not very healthy for you but it will clear your mind. You are a potions master so believe me when I tell you that you don't even want to ask me what it is."

Severus nodded and sat on the door sill again coughing blood, a side-effect of the potentially lethal State of Shock Draught he recognised only too well as he brewed it for St Mungos hospital. There it was used to forcefully wake up patients from magically induced coma, and that only in hopeless cases when nothing else worked. Val sat next to him, oblivious to how sick he was, and continued ranting like a shotgun: "You need to take me to the place where we can find a personal object that belonged to Sirius Black and then we have to go to the Veil of Death _immediately_. My father talked to one of the Unspeakables on guard earlier this evening and found out that the Veil's surface started showing some activity about the time when you and your _friends_ honoured us with your visit. The phenomenon corresponds roughly to the anniversary of Sirius's death which is in a few hours from now!"

"I need 10 minutes," said Snape flatly, too tired to notice that Val sat entirely too close to him for his liking. "And you're more stupid than presumed!"

"Why?"asked Val innocently.

"To leave a message that could be found on me. Don't you know where I went?"

"I have a pretty good idea," said Val cheerfully. "I'm glad that Dad's wrapping paper was finally put to good use. Besides, I never liked the notion of using constellation patterns prone to changing shape as packaging."

In less than 5 minutes a newly composed Severus Snape and very enthusiastic Val clad in electric green robes instead of her usual black ones stood in front of the house on Grimmauld Place 12. Severus fought a watery weakness threatening to pour out of his eyes when he felt the Order wards gone and the Fidelius Charm broken with the death of Albus Dumbledore. All the Order Members, including Snape, the traitor, have become Secret Keepers in turn. At least the Order did not yet regroup sufficiently to curse the house against Snape. So instead of letting the tears fall, Severus managed to produce a half-hearted trademark smirk with his facial muscles making Val laugh heartily.

"What?" snapped Severus, irritated by the woman's obvious stupidity.

"Nothing. It's just you being you. Don't get me wrong but I'm not your student and I'm in no need of good intimidation."

"I couldn't care less about what you might require. We're here to work, Ms Peverell. I'm not sure if you're quite familiar with the concept of _working,_" said Severus, his grief for Albus threatening to spill out through the many hollow places of his aged soul.

At that moment they were entering the hall of Grimmauld Place 12 and the old door with snake handle gave way to let in two late night visitors, an old guest and a total stranger.

Buried in his grief for a lost friend Snape missed the precious moment when he should have warned Val not to touch anything. It was too late because she was already grabbing the curtains hiding the portrait of Mrs Walburga Black, Sirius' mother, that would scream horrible offences at any visitor. It normally took very strong spells to silence her, with potential to ruin their mission if a patrolling Order Member overheard the commotion.

All Members of the Order of the Phoenix tried to sneak around her portrait on tiptoes. All except Sirius, who sometimes enjoyed waking his mother only to shut her up with even crueller retorts and curses.

Severus could not have possibly ever imagined what happened next.

Val opened the curtains. Severus took out his wand and was about to cast a powerful silencing charm.

Except that there was no sound.

Mrs Black stared at Val in utmost shock, eyes wide open.

Val acted with genuine innocence towards a notorious portrait: "Charming woman. Could we use this painting for our plan? She looks a lot like Sirius on some of his photographs."

Snape chuckled as Sirius´s resemblance to his mother was only obvious in the worst periods of his life, such as after living several months on rats, as well as in his craziest moments. He supposed Val must have seen the famous picture of a madman laughing before being shipped to Azkaban just like half of the wizarding world did.

Severus remembered Walburga from the time she was seeing her sons off on Hogwarts Express, a very different woman, cold but distinctive, not an old crazy hag like her portrait personality.

Val continued, more candid than ever: "I suppose she was his mother and he must have loved her!"

Severus thought that the silence of the portrait was a true miracle.

At his current rate of exhaustion, notwithstanding the semi-legal energy potion he drank, he was glad for all things odd about Val, he didn't care how much she was not telling him about her manifestly present, although skilfully hidden magical abilities, as long as she could do such wonderful things. That woman was no Muggle, perhaps a Muggle-born, but surely a witch. The Dark Lord was wrong. And the Dark Lord was very rarely wrong about anything whatsoever.

In that precious moment the things turned even more bizarre. At the repeated sound of Val's voice Mrs Black burst into tears, turned around and ran away deep into the dark background of the painting, where she disappeared in one of the shady corners, as if she didn't want to be seen sobbing.

Snape decided to think later about all that for he was decidedly too tired to think in the first place so he just closed the curtains: "I would advise against using the portrait. Black's old room was upstairs on the second floor. Let's find something over there". They heard Mrs Black whimpering silently as they walked up.

Val chose a photograph of Sirius and his school friends from the walls. The Marauders, Snape thought, remembering the humiliations he was victim of at school, most of them coming from Sirius and his three best friends. Apparently the Permanent Sticking Charm had lost its strength over time and Val could easily take the picture from the wall. Snape was curious and tried to remove another picture but on that one the Charm held. Or it was again one of those things Val could just do, like the miracle with Mrs Black.

Yet, when she did it, the copy of the photograph in black and white colours, its ghost, its shadow, remained on the wall. Sirius and his friends were waving cheerfully in the lost land of happy ever afters none of them ever reached in life. Snape caught himself thinking that despite everything those were the good times. War had not yet started. He had not yet been stupid enough to become a Death Eater.

And Lily was alive.

Pushing away all memories before he would collapse again from dizziness and negative emotion, he followed Val downstairs. They had to hurry.

On the way out Severus had to notice that Mrs Black was still crying.

"Her reaction to you is peculiar," he said to Val. "I would be curious to see if she would actually speak to you if you tried."

Val just shrugged, unimpressed, and stepped outside. They were in a rush to reach their destination.

The dawn was about to break, much colder than it should have been at the end of June. The very life on earth seemed diminished and faint and the times have turned dark. Severus wondered if that had anything to do with his own actions that night and the passing away of the greatest wizard of their age Albus Dumbledore.

They reached the Ministry just on time. The premises were deserted and the lonely night guard stunned before he could sound an alarm. When they arrived to the Department of Mysteries, Severus started searching his robes for the special potion he prepared to enhance the effect of his spell to call Sirius back. The Veil was still rippling, but they could both tell that it was gradually becoming more and more still. And in a matter of minutes it would become like a deep blue sea, calm and polished as oil, in the windless hour of the night.

Val wasted no time grabbing the photograph of the Marauders, which she had kept close to her chest. Snape found the vial he was searching for and was about to consume it when the liquid from it suddenly disappeared.

"Where-?" he exclaimed.

"-What?" she reacted turning to look at him again.

"This vial! It was full!" Snape said.

"What vial?" asked Val looking at Snape as if he was manifestly out of his mind, her eyebrows curving in disdain Snape could use on particularly incompetent students. It would have worked especially well to frighten Hufflepuff.

Snape looked at his hands and they were empty. The vial was nowhere to be seen. _Am I so tired that my mind is not working?_ thought Snape frantically searching his robes. His face remained impassive as ever and if he looked at Val at that moment he would see her suppressing an evil grin.

The rare potion Snape meticulously carried with him every day in the past two weeks, not knowing when they were going to attempt to call Sirius Back, had mysteriously disappeared. The failure of their action was almost guaranteed.

Turning to face the Veil, Val produced a large vial from her robes, more then half empty and too big for its contents, where she had previously stored three drops of her own blood.

"So far, so good", she said, and to Snape her words sounded like a strange encouragement. "I hope that I remember correctly my father's instructions and that they will work against all odds."

Then she dropped one drop of blood on the photograph, one on the ground in front of her feet, as close to the Veil as possible without falling into it, and finally the last drop into the arch. Thick grey fumes soared from the Veil and filled up the room, slowly turning the stale air of the Ministry cellars into a whirlwind of dark purple haze mingled with orange glow.

Severus started speaking the incantation summarizing the main events in Sirius's life, all the while not believing _he_ was the author of that particular eulogy. His exacerbated hatred towards Sirius grew in intensity with every point in his biography he was forced to mention, if he was to succeed in his latest personal obsession to set things right. As if anybody could set anything right in life! Severus wondered why he couldn't stop himself from trying. And he was sure that without the Empathy brew he had lost, the spell would not work. He needed the potion to make his story heart felt, because he could not possibly bring himself to genuinely admire any deeds Black committed in life.

Val responded by singing in a language unknown to Severus. It wasn't a spell, but a kind of a song, a lullaby perhaps, or music from some tropical place. She looked expectantly towards the Veil, humming softly amidst relentless purple fog becoming thicker and thicker, threatening to choke them.

She would never admit to Snape that she saw serious flaws in her father's theory that anybody's blood would do the trick with the help of something belonging to the person stuck in the Veil. She continued to sing, hoping that Snape would mistake a simple song for children in Brasil for something more intelligent and part of the ritual to bring Sirius Black back from the dead.

Contrary to Snape's obviously biased opinion about education outside Hogwarts, Val had had very good education in South America. She was a professional magical healer and excelled in many other subjects such as transfiguration. And all her previous knowledge agreed with Severus: a blood of a close relative was required to succeed in what they were attempting to do.

Severus felt sick. It was around 4am and he didn't have any sleep in the past 72 hours. He wanted to leave, but he was simply too tired to get to it when a faint orange breeze victoriously overcame the purple mist in front of the malevolent arch. The Veil stopped moving, resembling a normal curtain again, black and tattered, fluttering gently on the non existing wind.

"We must have done something wrong," Severus said. "We should have waited or brought Bellatrix here by force."

"No, Severus. My father was clear that my blood would do."

"Your blood, yeah," Severus reacted venomously before thinking "why didn't he use his if he's so intelligent..."

"My father cannot give blood because he suffers from a permanent health condition that prevents it!" Val reacted furiously. A splash of slime coloured green liquid materialised in the air and sputtered all over Snape's face and hair obeying the call of gravity.

"There goes your potion," Val laughed amused. "Very funny. Are you always that funny when you... how did you label our association? When you work with someone?" Snape wiped his face with his hands and they recognised the lost Empathy brew, a precious potion, wasted. Red with anger, he had no opportunity to offer a nasty comment, because Val, as always, just had to continue talking.

"And my father was 100% sure that it had to work with my blood as I already told you a million times. There must be something else we didn't take into account. I should return home and revise Dad's notes," the disappointment returned to Val's voice and all of a sudden it boarded on despair. "He will be devastated by our failure. He really wanted to help Sirius."

Hearing her admit her own failure somehow calmed Snape's murderous instincts to just stun her unconscious and go away. He decided against it and was about to cast a Concealment Charm around them both and attack the thick purple mist surrounding the exit so that they could both leave, before the the arrival of the first curious Ministry employees.

Then, swiftly, decidedly, bluntly, terribly, the Veil tore apart and spouted an unconscious person in front of their feet, surrounded by orange mist.

It was not Sirius Black.

It was a not even a man.

An unknown young woman laid immobile on the pavement, her long blond hair with some traces of red in it spilled around her face as a pool of orange blood. Her breathing was soft and irregular. There was some dried blood on her skirts and she had prominent bruises on her forearms and neck. Val and Severus were rendered speechless faced with the fruit of their action.

Severus gathered the last atoms of his magical strength to levitate the body of a stranger. He pulled both Val and the hovering form close to him and cast the Concealment Charm, hoping that the night guards would not think too much about an extremely large office plant they would be shortly seeing, changing locations within the Ministry. He thought of _Potter_ and his damn Invisibility Cloak which would have come handy in their situation.

They moved very slowly and two painful hours later they were in Val's shop looking human again even if Severus decidedly didn't feel that way. They laid the unknown guest on one of the beds in Val's Death Eater hospital. She seemed to be peacefully asleep.

It was almost 6am.

"I should leave. The Ministry will undoubtedly try and arrest me today for my crime," stated Severus quietly.

"You should get some sleep first. I can assure you that you are quite safe at my place, at least until your arm starts burning," Val was adamant in not letting him go as if he was one of her patients.

Severus gave up arguing with her and focused the little amount of attention he had left to examine the sleeping woman. He knew one thing for sure, the spell they performed could theoretically only bring forth somebody who shared the blood of Sirius Black, or very hypothetically the blood of the Black family, but the woman did not look like them. She didn't even look like a witch. Thin and helpless, she commanded compassion and the healer in Val was already busy examining her and making her bed more comfortable.

Snape decided to interrupt her and allow some curiosity to leave his mind. The hour was late and they have gone well past the normal acquaintance with each other, at least by his standards, so he asked, trying to ignore the slimy dripping of the potion drying slowly in his hair: "Why did you start calling me Severus?"

"I wanted you to respond in kind and call me Val. It makes me feel so old when they call me by my last name. I may be a few years older than you but I'm not that old…"

"When did you graduate?" Severus asked.

"I'm 38 if that was the meaning of the question," Val replied harshly.

"I checked and there is no such school as Chile Academy for Advanced Witchcraft. I would really like to know when and where you went to school," inquired Severus fighting the urge to sleep forever in the back of his mind.

"I would prefer not talking further about my certainly flawed education if you don't mind."

"Val…" he welcomed the rolling of her name on his vocal chords, daring a more serious question in almost serious voice, with only the slightest touch of his standard sarcasm. "What other things are you not telling me?"

"I'd rather not talk about that either. Let's get some rest and then think about solving our common problem here", she ended the discussion pointing at the sleeping form on the bed when two Apparition cracks brought two dark hooded figures in the middle of the room.

Mr Peverell entered from nowhere. Severus felt something tickling his hands and he saw Val taking Ariana's hands. In an instant, the hospital room was gone. He was sitting in a cosy half empty pub with Ariana sleeping on a chair next to him, her head leaned on his shoulder. A few guests were drinking and cheering towards a small stage in the corner featuring an abandoned trumpet and a piano. Old barman was polishing the bar with a damp yellow cloth. Severus froze noticing the two hooded figures seated there. They didn't even have to show themselves for him to recognise Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy.

"Trust me, Lucius, I would never bring my sister's husband to an unsafe place. You are an idiot but since Narcissa likes you I intend to help you restore your miserable health." Bellatrix waved to the barman who served them Muggle whisky, some fancy brand Snape's father used to prefer when he could afford it. "Drink! It helped me after my last punishment and at first I certainly didn't trust that filthy half-breed Greyback either when he recommended me this place."

Lucius Malfoy looked ancient and he seemed to be unable to talk, shaking as a leaf. Severus felt a pang of guilt and suppressed it immediately. Not his fault, this. He managed to save Lucius's son Draco from splitting his soul by murder at the age of 15, and that had to be enough.

Hide, you idiot! The impulse came to him with too much delay but when he wanted to get up and take Ariana with him, the barman stood in his way and served him a bottle of whisky as well. Severus was puzzled as he realized something else. Bellatrix and Lucius wore casual _Muggle _clothing. Impossible! Severus looked at himself and instead of his black robes he spotted black baggy jeans and extra large black sweatshirt. He nervously touched his new shirt all over and felt a large hood on its back. He was horror struck and did not even dare to look at his shoes. The robes of the unconscious woman next to him turned into simple grey Muggle dress in a very basic design fashionable for that summer. Severus would never admit it, but he was prone to gossip and he would regularly check Witch Weekly when a copy could be found forgotten somewhere in Hogwarts. The Great Hall was a particularly good place to harvest it. He glanced from the barman to Bellatrix and Lucius, only to catch Bellatrix staring through him as if Snape was not there.

_She cannot see me! She is here and yet somewhere else at the same time. The Peverells are somehow fracturing the reality. Impossible! h_e thought, fighting to keep his facial expression mean, so that Val could not see how _impressed_ he was.

Before he could logically dissect and determine the origin of the unusual spell in place. he was distracted by the appearance of two musicians on the stage among cheers of scarce crowd. The short old man with all of a sudden long bushy ash blond hair, striped shirt and dark jeans lifted the trumpet. A good looking angular-faced woman in a pair of tight blue jeans and shiny, blazing, black and silver T-shirt sat at the piano, her hair tight in a bun held by electric green pin.

Severus couldn't believe his own eyes and ears at the scene unfolding in the pub when the music started. _I must be dreaming_, he thought. _Voldemort's snake must have poisoned me and I am now hallucinating..._

"Come, Lucius, there is also some kind of on the move therapy that goes with the potion" he heard Bellatrix trying to be helpful to her brother-in-law despite her abominable character. As Lucius didn't move, Bellatrix pulled him to the dance podium and started gently moving with the Muggle music, urging Lucius to do the same but without major success, laughing as Severus didn't hear her laugh since he was a first year in Hogwarts, and she had almost graduated but hadn't become a Death Eater yet. After a while Lucius ended up crawling on the floor so she hoisted him back to the bar and poured him another drink.

Severus forgot his glass and pulled a sip of whisky directly from the bottle, trying to disregard how much it made him look like his father. He permitted himself to look at the woman playing the piano who precisely at that moment moved a stranded dark lock from her face into the bun, tossed her head backwards as if in trance from playing, and then sent a huge wink his way, followed by a knowledgeable smile, bright and mean at the same time. "_Gits_!" the smile said, no words required.

Snape lifted both his legs on the table, considering a pair of ugliest worn out trainers he had ever seen. At least they were black. He applauded and cheered loudly in direction of the two musicians, at the same time pulling another big sip of whisky from the bottle. He even whistled to Bellatrix who was again dancing as did some other guests. Lucius sat mesmerized at the bar.

_We are in this together_, he thought, starting to see Val as a long lost sister, feeling almost as an over-aged Marauder. _We have just pranked the two most prominent pure-blood Death Eaters into drinking Muggle whisky and dancing to Muggle music, unknowingly. And we did it together. Merlin, we were even there to rescue someone jettisoned by the Veil!_ Severus was under no illusion: their guest arrived by the will of the Veil and not as a consequence their failed efforts to call Sirius back.

Severus felt ludicrous. He leaned back in his chair careful not to let the girl they retrieved slide to the floor. _Who was she? What were they going to do with her?_

Grinning like a maniac, invaded by music, Severus Snape finally succumbed to dreamless sleep. He didn't see it happening, but the stranger from the Veil fell neatly on top of him as if he was the most comfortable couch.

It was 8 am.

Summer school holidays have officially begun. Albus Dumbledore was dead. And Ariana Dumbledore was back among the living, if only temporarily.


	9. Chapter 9 Family Business

I don't own Harry Potter.

OliveB Thank you for the review. It makes me really happy that you still appreciate my story ;-))

Here goes the next instalment looking for readers.

**Chapter 9 Family Business**

Sirius Black stood determined in front of a line of beautiful old fashioned Muggle houses in London, wand at ready.

The place looked well maintained compared to the last time he had seen it some 70 years in the future. Two houses moved lazily apart revealing the familiar shape of the Black family residence on Number 12 Grimmauld Place, looming ominously among its somewhat less impressive, but also far less gloomy non magical neighbours. More gentle then ever before, the last of the Blacks pressed the snake shaped door handle and entered carefully, not to disturb the foreboding silence.

In the hall he repelled a Bogart, a colony of Pixies and one much nastier dark creature, which tried to bite his leg off, that he didn't even recognize. At least his mother's portrait was not hanging on the wall because she had yet to be born. Grateful for meeting only magical creatures for a start, Sirius wondered about the best way to fight off his living ancestors once he would unavoidably meet them as well. Grandfather Arcturus was most probably the head of the family at that time as great-grandfather Sirius turned mad before the age of 40. _Just like I almost did_, Sirius thought angrily, wondering if he was finally going to follow his namesake on the path to insanity and finish his days as an anonymous patient in St Mungos institute for magical illnesses in the early 20th century. He swallowed remembering the pleasant character of grandfather Arcturus – Sirius was sure that he would kill the intruder into the family house on the spot and ask questions later.

He silently climbed the stairs towards the main living area with all intention to surprise his relatives, duel them into submission and lock them up in the broom cupboard. The next step would be to steal the relevant parts of the family library and hide somewhere safe as Padfoot to read through them. James never learned how to read in his Animagus form and Sirius was glad that he could do it, even if unrolling parchments and opening pages with front paws was a daunting task.

The plan was pure adrenaline and Dumbledore would criticise him for it, no doubt, but that would be the Dumbledore from the future. The young man he had seen a few days ago seemed at least as reckless as Sirius always was, or even more.

Sirius should have known that simple plans would not work against the Black family. If nothing else, the fact that he had been killed by his own cousin should have taught him not to underestimate them. He jumped aside immediately after opening the living room door, dodging the killing curse sent his way, probably by grandfather Arcturus, who otherwise seemed to be having tea with pregnant wife. My aunt, Sirius thought, she will give life to aunt Lucretia in a few months. Sirius's grandmother Melania Black, born McMillan died of dragonpox long before Sirius was born.

One hour later the room looked like a battlefield with broken glassware and ruined family heirlooms scattered here and there. Sirius thanked his dog reflexes for successfully escaping another deadly curse when he yelled Expelliarmus and finally disarmed his grandfather. Drenched in stinky sweat he made sure that both grandparents were properly tied and gagged in the corner, wands safely away and enchanted against summoning, while Sirius went searching for the nearest broom cupboard.

It felt reassuring to be in control of one's family.

Sirius walked on tiptoes, bent on avoiding Kreacher at all costs. He was afraid of the Elf's magic more than that of his family and quite unwilling to test the hypothesis that he was Kreachers' Master as much as Arcturus was, even if out of time, so Kreacher theoretically should not be able to hurt him.

The stairs to the attic suddenly drew his attention. He remembered seeking shelter among the cobwebs and discarded dark objects as a child, lost between items thought of as having no further meaning, banished from the family collection. They were all as abandoned as a lonely black-haired boy wandering among them, eager to make new discoveries. Some of them caused him rashes and burns if he ventured into exploring them but they were still much friendlier to him than any living member of his closest family.

_No harm taking a look_, he thought. Had there been any other relatives around, they would have cursed him by now and Kreacher could be heard making noise in the kitchen, all the way down in the basement and as far away from the attic as possible.

Constant vigilance, he told himself ironically several seconds later, when he was hanging upside down from the ceiling beams, wrapped in bandages like a mummy, and most unsure about what had happened to him. From the angle he was hanging he could discern a pair of legs in elegant black velvet trousers. He painfully pushed his head forward, trying to look up and see to whom the legs belonged.

He discerned a pair of old aristocratic hands with manicured nails holding two wands. High above was a face of a rather old man with typical Black angular features. There were almost no grey hairs in his dark mane flanking a face with pointed beard and narrow expressionless blue eyes. Sirius realized that the man's eyes were supposed to be sharp of expression and brown in colour in the portraits Sirius had seen. The unnaturally calm pale blue gaze had a much more sinister cause than the Black genes which left a touch of clear mountain spring water colour in the eyes of Sirius, Bellatrix and so many others.

The old man was blind.

The eyes that should have been brown, like Regulus's eyes, the dead brother's eyes. The eyes above him were dead in life. So pale and so expressionless.

At that moment Sirius shivered and knew without any doubt who the old man was. Feeling the dark magic bonds strangulating him like invisible anacondas, he managed to squeeze out:

"Great-great-grandfather…"

Choking stopped but the grip of bandages didn't get any less tight.

"And who would you be?" said the old man in a righteous rage. "I smelled you coming since you crossed the doorstep! Well I guess that disarming my grandson and his silly wife should not have proven too difficult for a competent wizard..."

Sirius fought for air as the bonds tightened. Mind desperately searching for an argument that would set him free from a deadly grip, he blurted: "I'm a Black! You wouldn't kill the Black heir, would you?"

"Heir?" the grip on Sirius felt uncertain. "My heir is an idiot gagged downstairs and I don't have any grandchildren."

"Not yet, great-great-grandfather, that's the keyword in this case. If you could see me, you'd know. Your name is Phineas Nigellus and you were the most hated Headmaster of Hogwarts. Your first-born son is called Sirius and your grandson Arcturus. He will have a son called Orion. Orion will have a son called Sirius Orion. Me. I'm your great-great-grandson. You've never seen me because you died in 1925," Sirius repented on the last sentence as it inadvertently left his mouth, realising it may have not been the best idea to break to Phineas Nigellus the news of his imminent death.

"Anyone knows who I am and how my son and grandson are called. It will take more than that to convince me that you are telling the truth," said the blind man, disdainfully.

Sirius thanked Merlin for the unwilling lessons in family genealogy he received as a child and proceeded with listing all ancestors of Phineas Nigellus as far as he knew into the past in a most neutral tone he could muster, keeping the rage still boiling inside him at bay, the bile in his throat threatening to drown him, ever since the Veil engulfed Ariana and swallowed her like a fancy desert. After covering a few centuries of ancestors, causing no reaction at all in the old man, Sirius grew very weary. It was time to set the pride aside.

So first he paused, and then he begged: "Please, great-great-grandfather, I need your help!"

"And why would you be asking for _my_ help after what your _intrusion_ in here?"

"Because against my own personal wishes in that matter, I _am_ a Black," Sirius spoke with difficulty. "Moreover, I am the last living male Black, which should normally mean something to the pure blooded maniac like you. If it doesn't, you can kill me anyway. It would be the second time that a family member kills me for being who I am. And since you defeated me, you seem to be the only one of my other living relatives intelligent enough to help me."

The old man said flatly: "I wish my son Sirius had the same amount of Black temper as you have, young man."

"Then you believe me?"

"I knew you were a Black ever since you opened the attic door. You stepped over the Doxy infested door mat in front of it. Only family and Kreacher would spontaneously avoid such traps in this house," explained the old man with some mirth in his voice. "But I still have many questions."

"I will answer all your questions if you keep my being here a secret from the rest of the family," Sirius decided to use the window of opportunity presented by his ancestor's moment of doubt. "I offer myself to be used as a test subject for the experiments in dark magic you are most probably conducting if the family legends are true. But only if you help me in exchange."

"Would you trust me to help you, if I accepted your terms?" Phineas Nigellus Black asked, his cold voice betraying great curiosity.

"No, but I don't have a choice."

Phineas Nigellus grinned and released Sirius from a deadly grip: "We have a deal. Tell me what you want."

With a sour head from falling right on top of it, Sirius considered that, while trust was never to be given lightly to any member of the Black family, he would have to work with the old man: "I need to return to the future. To the year 1996, where I come from. I have to find someone there."

Sirius carefully skipped any mention of his other equally important project to help murder Lord Voldemort and all his pure blooded followers, which included several Black family members.

"How sweet!" Phineas Nigellus snorted in contempt. "Now tell me the real reason."

"Why, of course, to exterminate all arrogant silly pure bloods including myself and make the wizarding world a better place!" Sirius barked, remembering painfully all over again one of his first conversations with Ariana when she asked him, in all innocence, if he was a wizard. "That is the only cause I would live for if I had never met Ariana Dumbledore…"

"You met Percival's daughter? I heard they were keeping her locked up somewhere." Phineas Nigellus tugged his beard looking more and more uncertain about how to treat his unexpected guest as he went on: "The Dumbledore family has grown very peculiar since Percival and Kendra died. Fishy, a wizard could say. And then the society gossips about us the Blacks who are not half as unusual…"

"I don't care about the other Dumbledores!" Sirius yelled back, bluntly.

"Percival was an old friend of mine. I will pretend that I didn't hear what you just said and I _will_ help you for _his_ sake," the old man finally said as if it was the end of a discussion that never occurred in the first place. The former Headmaster of Hogwarts was used to have the last word in everything.

Sirius pondered what pretending could mean while Phineas went to the back of the attic and returned with a very old but impeccably preserved scroll of parchment entitled: "Illegal and Untested Transportation Devices for Witch and Wizard, Bouncing Through Space and Time: Enchanted Animals, Crystal Time Bubbles, Veils of Death and many more"

"This work may be of interest to you. However, before we proceed, you have to do me a favour. I am due to appear at the ball this evening in Malfoy Manor offered by my young friend Abraxas. Since Arcturus is _indisposed_ to accompany me, you could take his place. I hope that you look similar enough that we don't have to borrow Polyjuice Potion for the occasion."

"No worries there," Sirius chuckled. "We all look alike. I'll just borrow his robes for tonight and you have to fill me in a little bit on how he would normally behave. I've known him as a nasty old man but I have no idea how he was in his youth."

"Well, there is this catch" continued Phineas somewhat abashed, "Arcturus is a natural charmer."

Sirius grinned and commented: "My charm is a bit rusty but it'll have to do."

"I need you to dance with and keep occupied at all times a particularly ugly and evil young girl of high society so that she doesn't pester me while I conclude a business arrangement with Abraxas, one that could be also beneficial for your plans but I cannot tell you more at this stage. The young lady in question believes that I am a dotted old pure blood who would marry her for her youth and give her the social prestige she is so badly lacking. I am sure she would poison me if I was stupid enough to marry her and she persecutes me mercilessly at every social occasion. "

"That doesn't seem too difficult," Sirius was pleased, "what's the lady's name?"

"Dolores Jane Umbridge."

"I'll take that back. I'd rather go out with cousin Bella!" Sirius turned quite loud expressing his opinion earnestly.

"Who's that?

"Never mind. You wouldn't know. A pearl of the Black family some time from now," Sirius felt slightly sick at the thought of his would be murderer.

"Umbridge, Sirius. Can you do it?

"I believe so," said Sirius, resigned to his faith.

"Good."

"But I want something in return first," added Sirius rapidly while Phineas raised an eyebrow, "tell me what you know about Ariana and her family."

"Why should I? You said yourself you didn't care about Dumbledores..." said Phineas Nigellus as if he was extremely bored, while his empty eyes narrowed dangerously in complete contradiction with his voice.

"You want a deal with Malfoy? Start talking. Otherwise the deal is off," Sirius said in the coldest and most disdainful manner of speaking he had learned from his father. He hated using that particular tone with all his heart, but he knew it was necessary.

Phineas Nigellus sighed and turned away: "Right..."

After a long pause he seemed undecided how to continue, taking a seat at his large desk, a rock of solid wood under enchanted flying model of the starry skies above northern Earth hemisphere, which he must have been studying before Sirius interrupted him.

"It's not a nice story, Sirius," he finally said.

The stars made tender metallic noises following their trajectory, a sea of sounds acting as the eyes of the old man. Sirius took this as a sign to seat opposite to Phineas feigning respect, the usual sickening feeling of being the endangered species in the family stuck inconveniently somewhere in his lungs. Yet he did his best to utter what he hoped to be an encouraging grunt, overwhelmed with patience very uncharacteristic for Sirius, as he waited for the whole story about Ariana to come to the light of the day, or more precisely, to the dimness of the attic.

The last glow of the afternoon sun crept secretly through the small window, in fear of two men contemplating each other as mortal enemies.

"Percival was a powerful and admired wizard, famous for collecting and exploring ancient magic artefacts. He was well over 50 when he started a family, hard to know exactly how old. They live tremendously long, most of these Dumbledores... unless they succumb to causes which are not _natural_. They don't keep the family tree and they never tell you their real age," commented Phineas, appearing indifferent to the subject, as if he was discussing the latest advances in Herbology.

"And so it happened that Percival married a Muggle born, an excellent woman, called Kendra, and they had three beautiful children, two sons Albus and Aberforth, and a daughter called Ariana. Their life was like a fairy tale, a model magical family. Until one day three Muggle boys attacked Ariana while she was playing outside her house next to the river. She was 7 years old. What they did to her... Right, how to say it, she got really hurt... She was... She was tortured and dishonoured, never to be married."

Sirius disagreed strongly with the last statement knowing better, but he didn't want Phineas to stop telling the story. He could only start imagining how far the decent wizarding society would go in despising a supposedly dishonoured witch when the prejudice was still strong even in his own time among pure blooded families.

"But that was not the worst of it. They broke something in her being, turned her into a hollow shell, incapable to use magic, yet not quite a Squib, dangerous, totally dependent on her family to take care of her not to cause harm. She never went to Hogwarts, never received her letter," Phineas expression darkened as he spoke, almost as if he cared.

_Definitely not a trait wizarding history would remember __him __for, _thought Sirius, keeping his views wisely for himself.

"Percival believed she could have been even more talented than Albus," the old wizard's voice was lined with the emotion Sirius knew well, implacable hatred, but towards what, Sirius could not tell.

Phineas continued the tale forcing his voice into the usual aloofness: "Percival liked Muggles, he was nothing like Arcturus, nothing like I am. He admired them. He wrote a book about magical Muggle artefacts after an extensive study of several items with magical properties, labelled "miracles" by the Muggles. He even further explored and theorized on this rather bizarre term, claiming it had validity even from a wizarding point of view."

As one stating a simple truth the old man concluded: "There are no miracles, Sirius. There are only magical occurrences that Muggles cannot explain."

"Lesson number one in Muggle studies in Hogwarts, in my time", said Sirius deciding that agreeing with Phineas could be helpful.

"I am glad to see that they haven't changed my curriculum in 60 years," Phineas was proud. "Be as it may, old Percival wouldn't hurt a fly. Despite his great magical prowess, he had never used an unforgivable curse in his life until the day that changed everything for his family.

A few months after Ariana had been attacked and when it became obvious that the best healers could not help her, Percival lost it. He went after the Muggles and turned them into bags of blood and bones not to be recognised by their nearest kin.

They were young boys, not yet of age, the oldest one was 16 years old.

Percival died soon after that."

At that point of the story Sirius had to grip the chair to remain calm, regretting he asked for it, yet unable to reign in his desire to absorb everything there was to learn concerning Ariana.

"And there is still more. Seven years later, when Ariana was 14 years old, there was an explosion in the Dumbledores' house in Godric's Hollow. Kendra died in the incident and the oldest brother, Albus, who had just graduated from Hogwarts, got custody of Ariana. Gossip soon spread that she had killed her mother, so _poor Albus_ had no choice but to commit her to some kind of mental institution."

Phineas's hands gripped both wands and for a moment Sirius thought that the story would come to an abrupt end and an Unforgivable curse would be thrown his way. The effort of the old wizard to calm down was excruciating, requiring the force of will of the highest magnitude when he finally set the wands on the desk, one next to another, and continued his story.

"Trust me, Sirius, Albus was not a good boy, powerful like his father, yes, but with a heart as black as my own. Albus had this friend, no one knows where he found him, but I do not believe he's British, this healer, this charlatan called Greenywald – "

"- Grindelwald!" Sirius interrupted.

"Whatever! The man reeks of Dark Magic or I am not a Black. More importantly, Ariana disappeared a year after her mother's death and the family held a funeral marked with a scandal of Albus and Aberforth physically attacking each other during the service. And I'd bet my fortune, even without hearing your story of how you met her, that she's still alive because no one saw the body. I'd say that Albus and his little foreign friend locked Ariana up, completely away from the world. But no one knows what happened for sure. And no one has heard of Ariana for twelve years."

Immense sadness crept into Sirius like a many legged monster, pressuring his soul to surrender and fall apart. He realised Ariana's life was worse than his. Sirius may have lost everything when they sent him to Azkaban but she, she had never even had a life. Having seen how Gellert treated Ariana, Sirius doubted that the abuse ended after the Muggle episode of her early childhood.

"I told you it wasn't a nice story," whispered Phineas, sounding just like Sirius felt.

"She asked me if I knew you because we looked similar," Sirius whispered back, a strange complicity filling the space between the two men, occupied until then exclusively by hatred.

"Did she, now?" Phineas Nigellus gave a sad smile. "I'd see her sometimes when I was visiting Percival. She was the brightest little girl you can imagine ... I never knew that she remembered me in any form, the old ugly gentleman annoying her father... "

If Kreacher or Arcturus had come to the attic at that moment they could have easily defeated the two wizards there without any magic, both of them immersed too deeply in the sea of their own regrets. And Sirius forgot for a second that he could not, not even for one moment, trust Phineas Nigellus Black.

Unlike Grimmauld Place, the Malfoy Manor had not changed at all, Sirius thought without emotion. He must have been 15 the last time he attended a ball over there with his parents, stuck in fancy dress robes like a trapped animal, only some months before he would run away from home. Sirius loathed every single ball with the intensity he reserved only for his closest family.

Yet, when he stepped into the main ball room, helping Phineas Nigellus to find his way, Sirius was strangely affected. Many-candled crystal chandeliers underlined the white and golden brilliance of the place, bathing in light the fragile paintings of clouds and winged beings on the ceiling. White sculpted stucco decorations in form of magical creatures, centaurs, unicorns, dragons and many more, lurked from the walls at the coming guests. Old fashioned parquet cracked in golden sparks under their feet and delicate antique chairs next to several elegantly rounded tables invited them to rest in the corners.

_Ariana would find this beautiful_, Sirius thought, _any girl would_, he mused.

Ornate windows, with old colourful hand-made glass, reflected the candlelight and projected scintillating works of abstract art on the walls. Night breeze permeated the old loosely attached glass fragments on many of the windows, but the giggling dancing couples didn't seem to mind or even notice the cold at all.

Malfoy Manor had an innocent look, not Dark in any sense. Arrogant and careless, but not evil, not yet. Sirius accompanied his great-great-grandfather to the drawing room where he could wait until Abraxas Malfoy would finish welcoming all his guests and be free to deal with other matters.

Dolores Umbridge noticed Sirius crossing the ballroom on the way back and immediately stalked him. He offered her his arm, with a lump in his throat, appreciating how at the age of 15 she was already as ugly as her older version he had seen terrorising Hogwarts as High Inquisitor and impostor Headmistress, when she must have been about a 100 years old.

"Arcturus, I am so pleased to see you! I was hoping to say good evening to your grandfather. Most charming gentlewizard and so intelligent despite his disability..." she went on and on, clutching his hand and pulling him towards the dancing floor with stubby fingers, eyes bulging. The horrid pink dress she wore, resembling a fluffy wall paper, and a matching white-pink purse that looked like it could have been made out of cat's skin, all made Sirius queasy. Half of his mind simply ignored Umbridge's existence and just kept on answering her constant "Hem, hem" with a ready if somewhat shorter "Hum, hum". Another half of his mind desperately wished to hold a hand of Ariana Dumbledore.

Since his talk to Phineas Nigellus, his grief for losing her sank somewhere deep and only positive memories swam forward from the bottom of his mind. Merlin, even if he had lost her forever, he was so happy that the Veil brought him to her of all places, the way she looked at him, the way they cuddled, the way they... Sirius's ears went red and he was grateful that his hair had grown again in his latest captivity. The daydream was cut short because Umbridge was pushing harder to drag him to the dance floor between offensive comments on half-breeds and magical creatures.

The ball room was perfect, Sirius thought, as he imagined taking Ariana by the hand and presenting her to all the guests before taking her in his arms for a proper waltz.

He found himself sipping a glass of wine with Umbridge in front of a large mirror. In the looking glass, a foreigner stared back at him wearing ornate dark purple dress robes, strong, healthy and tanned, long hair shining, not a colourless gaunt creature persecuted by inner demons and alcohol whiffs, that would leer at him from all mirrors in his home prison before his encounter with the Veil. _Arcturus will gain new popularity after tonight_, thought Sirius cynically, trying to suppress his feeling of guilt over being alive and even looking his part again when so many good people had died. _Stop it_, he told himself, _focus on the task at hand and you'll be going where you have to be in no time._

He bowed and kissed Umbridge's hand, finally assuming his role, offering her his arm for a dance. The orchestra was playing some sickeningly sweet tune but soon changed to a proper Vienna waltz, favourite dance of Sirius the child, who adored the vertiginous feeling it would bring. The music was way too fast for Umbridge who was stepping on his feet, until his imagination was no longer enough to tolerate her presence. Her stinking perfume was so close, her poisonous being interfered and spoiled his daydreaming about the happy days in the small house above the sea.

Out of boredom and annoyance, as so many times before, Sirius reverted to Marauders' techniques to handle unpleasant situations.

First he casat a silencing charm to stop Umbridge from talking. Then he transfigured her face to look like Ariana's with a touch of a mild concealment charm so that other guests would not notice it. The charm was not perfect. It could never be with Umbridge being so much shorter than Sirius, but it was the best he could do to survive the evening. The awful girl also protected him from having to talk to other guests and betray his total lack of acquaintance with any of them.

In the middle of the dance Sirius's mind became first dizzy and then blank. _What's going on?_ he thought. _I only had a single glass of wine._

Sirius saw a dim-lit pub, with two hooded figures at the counter. A closer look revealed cousin _Bella_ and cousin-in-law _Lucius_. Both looked battered, drinking _Muggle_ whisky in _Muggle clothing. _He heard soft jazz music coming from a stage in the middle, featuring an angular-faced female piano player that looked vaguely like Bella, a few years younger maybe, much more plain, less aristocratic and devoid of any malice, curse, or trace of insanity.

On one of the tables in the front row near the stage, there was a bloke with greasy lank black hair drinking and cheering, legs on the table. Merlin, could it be Snivellus? On his shoulder slept a familiar female figure Sirius had held in his arms a week ago, completely relaxed.

Sirius felt anger swelling, but his suffering didn't last long, because the girl stood up, walked towards him and offered Sirius her hand. Sirius accepted it without the slightest hesitation. A look in the mirror in Malfoy Manor revealed that he was now waltzing with a girl as tall as himself, smelling of wild plants and the sea, in a lovely pale orange evening dress, with a single peach coloured rose embellishing her hair, arranged elaborately on top of her head. There were no bruises any more on the revealed part of her shoulders and neck.

"Let us say good evening to the other guests," she said, "I'm sure that they all know you. I know them all from my mother's stories and albums and I would very much enjoy to meet them in person."

"Right," said Sirius, unable to refuse her anything, restraining the urge to pull out all the pins and then bury his head in her hair, barely able to remember that he was actually walking with charmed Umbridge and _not_ with Ariana.

They greeted numerous Mulcibers, Rosiers, Averies and to his great surprise also Bones and McKinnons, the pure blood families opposed to the Death Eaters ideas, who all promptly recognised him as Arcturus Sirius Black.

Sirius Orion Black dared to invite _Ariana_, because all trace of Umbridge has somehow disappeared, for another dance, precisely at the moment when the orchestra announced that they would be playing "_The Vampire's Tango_".

Sirius remembered tango lessons from his youth, linked to bitter-sweet memories of his very first ball in Malfoy Manor when he was eleven years old. He remembered a self-conscious Bella in a simple green dress appropriate for an engagement ceremony, leaning on her older sister Andromeda, confident and stunning in fluttering robes of grey and blue. Regulus and Narcissa ran over the dancing floor from the corners where they stood with respective parents and started playing hide and seek among guests until they were disciplined. Regulus was so happy and Narcissa not yet poised as she was going to become. Sirius hid behind a curtain and secretly admired Bella's fiancée Rodolphus' self-confidence as they performed complex tango figures to the delight and fake smiles of family and friends.

_How did we all lose our innocence_, he thought, with silent knowledge that not a single one of the Black children escaped unharmed from the future. Bella went mad and became a murderer. Andromeda's daughter was risking her life every day as an Auror. Narcissa's marriage made her cold-hearted and stiff ... and Regulus... his younger brother ... died when he changed his mind about being a Death Eater when he was barely more than a boy.

Sirius wanted to stop thinking about them all, about the potential that went to waste because of the rise to power of one Tom Riddle and the silly personal choices most of them had made. They would be by no means the only family decimated by the war and he only hoped that Tom Riddle would follow them on the path to extinction, which was, in the case of the Blacks, probably for the best course of action in any case, if anyone asked Sirius for his opinion.

The Malfoy Manor was an ocean of sounds when Sirius started to dance with Ariana again, eyes locked with hers, noticing immediately the air of discomfort in her attitude. With distinct impression that she wanted to run away, he held her in a tight, but completely proper and chaste embrace.

"I lied to you, Sirius," she said with a small voice of reason.

"About what?" he wanted to know as they made a sharp turn on the floor and he bent her backwards as the dance required, enjoying every step they made together.

"I didn't correct your assumption that you died," Ariana stepped on his toes and blushed.

Making another sharp turn he asked, frightened, about the other thing: "Was everything else also a lie?"

Ariana whispered: "What do you think?"

Sirius was uncertain and he had to thread on uneasy ground, not finding words: "When I... when we... I'm sorry. I ... "

Ariana's face turned sad: "It's all right. I understand. You'll find a girl with her honour intact one day-"

"NO! Never! What we... I mean ... you never... besides who cares if you did... I mean... what we did together ... was not the same ... "

"Right," Ariana murmured. "Listen, Sirius, I never went to a ball before. Not even in my dreams. Don't spoil my dream by telling me the truth now. Let's just dance."

So they danced, their legs getting tired, his arm safely on her back until their thoughts swirled and mingled like their bodies and the music stopped playing. Sirius escorted Ariana out to the terrace to get some air, ignoring the strange looks he was receiving from the other guests when passing by, completely oblivious to the path they had to cross to arrive on the outside.

Merlin, how he wanted to kiss her! She nervously looked away, to the floor and into the darkness. The night was black and empty, starless and dull, a proper night for mischief rather than love. He took her face in his hands and she allowed it.

He wanted her so badly to be real.

Ariana's eyes glittered sharply before darkening and changing shape.

Beautiful pale orange dress faded into repulsive pink. The magic ended with the music and the grandfather's clock in one of the adjacent rooms cheerfully sounded two times. It was two o'clock in the morning and they must have danced for hours.

Sirius opened his eyes from noise a second before he would end up kissing a very flushed _Umbridge._ Realising that his Marauder charms wore off, he managed to stop just on time. He heard Umbridge squeak; "OH! Uh! Oh my... You're so naughty... Arcturus!"

Positively disgusted and sick of both his visions and his reality, all social pretence gone, Sirius reached for his wand. He stunned Umbridge and stumbled away from the terrace, blinded with unshed tears. Back in the Manor corridors, he could not find the way to the ballroom. All rooms looked the same and the passages seemed to change directions as if he had been walking on the moving stairways of Hogwarts.

After a while, he ended in front of the drawing room where he left his great-great-grandfather, who was now engaged in deep discussion with their host:

"Are you sure that it works?" Phineas asked shrewdly.

"Only one way to know," said Malfoy. "It's the first device of this kind produced in continental Europe and very promising for your research. What I ask, is a small price to pay."

"I'm sure it will be much more _reliable_ than the flying cats or carpets ..." Phineas Nigellus gave an evil smirk.

"Sure, sure, I will deliver it to you tomorrow. I hope that you will live long enough to test it and tell me all about it."

Sirius ran away as he heard footsteps approaching the door. The deal was apparently done and Sirius had to collect and Obliviate Umbridge before returning to the Grimmauld Place.

Instead of reaching the terrace where he left her, he got lost again and ended up in a long dark corridor where all doors looked the same and caused uneasiness, just the like doors in the Department of Mysteries, except that there were no ghosts surging from crystal balls with prophecies in the process of breaking. And luckily cousin Bellatrix had yet to grace the world with her presence.

He opened a door in the very back, hoping it led to the terrace. Instead, he faced a huge crystal sphere floating in the middle of the room. It was rotating in a slow motion, surrounded with a purple energy field, similar in colour to the one Ariana was attacked with by Grindewald on two occasions.

Crucified within the sphere, arms and legs stretched in all directions in a way which must have been a source of constant and rather strong pain, hung _Professor _Severus Snape.

Sirius considered blasting the greasy git´s apparition and go on searching for Umbridge. Then he remembered one of his new life resolutions to _think_ (a bit more than usual) and ask pertinent questions _before_ acting, so he spoke:

"Have you recently been in a pub with a witch who slept on your shoulder, Snivellus?"


End file.
